Exhibiting the Holocaust - Brandeis Institutional Repository ...

Exhibiting the Holocaust: Museum Tour Narratives as Presentations of InstitutionalPost-Holocaust American IdentityMaster’s ThesisPresented toThe Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and SciencesBrandeis UniversityDepartment of Near Eastern and Judaic StudiesEllen Smith, AdvisorJon Levisohn, AdvisorIn Partial Fulfillmentof the Requirements forMaster’s DegreebyZachary AlbertMay 2012

Copyright byZachary Albert© 2012

AcknowledgementsI owe my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Ellen Smith, whose patience,support, and guidance from the beginning of my graduate school career to mygraduation has given me such a deep and rich passion for museum and materialculture studies. Her courses and our conversations can be heard throughout thistext. In short, this thesis could not have been written without her advice,reassurance, and suggestions.I am grateful to have Jon Levisohn on my thesis committee. His dedication tohis students is unparalleled, and through our conversations, he has provideddirection and encouragement for this thesis. I would also like to thank ProfessorsJonathan Sarna and Antony Polonsky for their always edifying courses anddiscussions that helped to inform this study. My Brandeis experience would nothave been the same without these historians, teachers, and role models.I would like to thank the Robert D. Farber University Archives and SpecialCollections Department for giving me not only invaluable research and teachingexperience, but for giving me a deeper understanding of the inner-workings of acollections and exhibitions department.I sincerely appreciate the support of the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust iniii

making this study possible. Specific to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I would liketo thank Museum Director David Marwell, Director of Education Elizabeth Edelstein,Museum Educators Loren Silber and Bonnie Unger, and the generous support of theGruss Lipper Foundation.I am indebted to the incredible generosity of Wendy and Harry Brandonthroughout my academic career, and the Brandeis University Near Eastern andJudaic Studies Graduate Tuition Remission grant for making this research possible.Thank you to my friends and colleagues for being a source of laughter andjoy, scholarship and support.To my family, Mom, Dad, and Zoe, thank you for your constant andunconditional love, support, and encouragement.iv

ABSTRACTExhibiting the Holocaust: Museum Tour Narratives as Presentations of InstitutionalPost-Holocaust American IdentityA thesis presented to the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic StudiesGraduate School of Arts and SciencesBrandeis UniversityWaltham, MassachusettsBy Zachary AlbertHolocaust museums on American soil not only offer visitors a mediatedversion of history, but they offer a position of post-Holocaust American identity.This thesis attempts to explore the ways in which two of the largest Holocaustmuseums in America – the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington, D.C. and the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to theHolocaust in New York City – publish their message, and how these messagescorrespond to their understanding of their own museological and nationalidentities.As mainstream cultural institutions, these museums publish their message –first and foremost – through their principal exhibition narratives. These narrativescripts are educational devices, and often represent initial encounters byv

contemporary American students with the events of the Holocaust. Thisinvestigation will attempt to understand how and to what end these narrativescommunicate intentionally constructed reflections of specific social, cultural, andpolitical objectives.This study promotes a more nuanced and comprehensive assessment ofinstitutional identity and the ways in which history is exhibited. By concentratingon these narratives, Exhibiting the Holocaust will provide support for the argumentthat institutional identity directly informs a highly constructed depiction andexperience of the Holocaust.vi

Prologue: My Hamsa or How Value Systems are Reflected Through Objects,Images, and Performances 1My hamsa playfully dangles from my neck as I write this piece. It has been apart of me since the admittedly insignificant date of May 26, 2008. It had been twoweeks since I had seen my family and friends, and it would be another three monthsbefore I would make it home again.I had just finished a cup of Polish coffee from a café located in the Jewishquarter of Kraków. I went inside to pay, and found myself looking at an array ofsmall, local jewelry pieces. This was hardly the “collecting souvenirs” kind of trip,but I thought a nice piece of Judaica might be appropriate. The small, silver hamsawith the Hebrew “chai” inside the palm captured my attention. Maybe it attractedme with its beauty and simplicity, or maybe I purchased it because I thought thathaving a defense against the “evil eye” in the coming months wouldn’t be a bad idea.You see, I was surrounded by death. I could feel it on my clothes and taste it in myfood. It paralyzed my legs as I attempted to walk on cobblestones. I had beenparticipating in a Holocaust Travel Seminar, a two-week course organized byprofessors from Rhodes College, Union University, and the University of Tennessee-Martin that had us studying in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. I called it atwo-week funeral. For me, the seminar was complete mourning: emotion1 This text was originally written for the Brandeis University, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department,course 133A, “Art, Artifacts, and History,” Ellen Smith, professor (Spring, 2011). It has been re-workedfor inclusion in this larger discussion of narrative and institutional identity.vii

superseded information. I had been studying the Holocaust since before I was Bar-Mitzvah, so the retelling of the graphic violence and terror was not the catalyst formy emotions. It seemed space - physical and mental - activated my feelings. Thephysical spaces entertained cruel paradoxes. On the one hand, visitors to the ghettooutside Terezín, Czech Republic walk past children playing soccer in a courtyardand mothers hanging clothes out to dry before entering the “model camp.” Thesecontemporary families live in Terezín. They laugh and cook next to torturechambers. In the old Jewish Quarter of Prague, renovated synagogues act ascommercial shells. The once ritual spaces are destinations for tourists. Are theyintentional museums or accidental memorials? Answers only complicate. If theyare intentional, how do these spaces counteract a Hitlerite vision of a museum to an“extinct people”? If they are accidental, how can a principal narrative surface thateducates and respects?For me, the physical space I encountered was in limbo between life anddeath, honor and desecration. In regard to mental space, I was alone. Not in an“angst-y teen poetry” way, but truly isolated. I was the lone Jew on the trip. As aSouthern Jew, I have been bestowed the role of “token” a fair amount, but yetanother reprisal did not shake my uneasiness. As we entered museums,synagogues-turned-museums, and concentration camps all eyes were “on me.”“How was Zach handling it?” “What does Zach think?” “What is Zach doing?” Was Ito be the Jewish litmus test? Not only was I experiencing, I was also performing.Whether I liked it or not.viii

The other students on the trip wanted to see my purchase. I unfolded thesmall envelope holding the pendant, and placed the hamsa in my palm. I gave anextremely abridged history of the symbol, and then placed it on a silver necklacethat once contained a Star of David I had received as a Bar Mitzvah present. Withinthe week, the trip ended in Poland and my classmates and professors boarded aplane back to the States. I had decided to remain in Europe and find ways tovolunteer with the small, struggling Czech Jewish community of Ostrava. As the restof the students flew home, I began a summer-long Jewish cemetery restorationproject.As the train barreled across the Polish countryside, from Warsaw to Ostrava,I was alone again. I remember optimistically thinking that my restoration projectwould act as a memorial to the lives of those whose funerals I had just attended. Icould do what the families of these graves would have done had the Holocaust notcome to Ostrava, and in that way honor their lives.Well-past twelve o’clock the train arrived at Ostrava’s main station. Zuzanna,the English-speaking member of the thirty member Jewish community, was therewith her husband waiting for me. She greeted me with a smile and hug, andexplained that she would be taking me to my building: a dormitory converted into ahostel for the summer months. On the way, we talked about family, food, and somelogistics about my stay. I remember staring out her car window and feeling a shockthat our pleasant conversation was not corresponding to my view of “White Power”graffiti on highway walls and storage buildings marked with freshly tattooedswastikas. With every turn my hamsa clung to my chest. “What have I gotten myselfix

into?” I wondered. Before I could completely digest my own question, Zuzannainformed me that someone would call to let me know what I would be doingtomorrow. As she left, she cautioned, “It is probably best if you don’t tell people whyyou’re here. Don’t tell them you’re Jewish.” This, coupled with the swastikas, wasnot becoming the “memorial” I had envisaged. I thanked Zuzanna and her husbandfor their help and hospitality, laid my backpack on the floor, and sat in my emptyroom.The morning brought promise. But as afternoon approached, the promisesoon faded with the waning prospect of plans. I found myself in this routine for thenext few days. Waiting for a call, a call from someone I had never met, to take me tobegin a project I had only imagined.Then, one morning at 7:30am, about a week after I had arrived, Petrtelephoned. He didn’t speak any English, but I took the sign of a call as evidence toinvestigate outside the building. Petr was there, waiting in his car. He smiledreluctantly as he looked at a napkin he had in his hand. He had scribbled someEnglish and Czech words on the thin paper. He looked up from his “Rosetta napkin”and asked if we were going to the cemetery. I nodded my head and we drove off.When we arrived at the cemetery in Hlučín, we got to work. 2 For the first fewdays it was a “monkey-see, monkey-do” operation. I was never able to ask Petr,2 Hlučín is a town in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic located 11 km northwest ofOstrava, Czech Republic. According to the International Association of Jewish Genealogical SocietiesInternational Jewish Cemetery Project, the Jewish population in 1930 totaled 21 individuals. The Jewishcemetery, founded in 1814, was “completely destroyed by the Nazis in 1942-1943” and tombstones were“used for a drainage trough.” In 1946, the Soviet army transferred Jewish remains to another location andused a portion of the cemetery for soldier burials. No stones are in their original locations.International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, “International Jewish Cemetery Project,”www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/czech-republic/hlucin.html. Accessed on April 9, 2012.x

“Why did you choose, as a non-Jew, to help these graveyards?” but I think in workingside-by-side we explained to each other the importance of the activity. As Iuncovered stones from brush, earth, and ditches, I felt a pride in knowing that therewas not a more important place I could have been. I remember on one of the firstdays clouds formed in the distance, and then the rain began to beat down like anever-ending cliché. But as grass turned to mud, the rain brought a strange comfort.It saturated the ground and clung to the faded stones. Before my trip, a close friendand Holocaust survivor told me a story about how the Nazis gathered the Torahscrolls from his community and brought them to the town center. 3 There, they put amatch to them, creating a bonfire of defilement. For three days and three nights,the Torah scrolls were lit on fire, and for three days and three nights the rains cameto quell the flames. In this, he understands, was a miracle. These torturedcemeteries feel that fire. Yet the rains come like family, like sons and daughters whoperished in the flames of Auschwitz, to heal and help repair a tradition, a way of life,a religion that cannot be washed away.This community and these cemeteries don’t know me, but somehow I feellike I know them. I feel this strong connection that is ingrained into every fiber ofmy being. And not to break the hearts of my Sunday school teachers, but I don’tthink I received it through rigorous Hebrew school lessons or observance of everyJewish holiday. I think this sense of tradition - l’dor v’dor - was given to me at birth.There is an old teaching that states, at birth, a newborn cries because it had learntall of the Torah, all of HaShem's words, and understood them perfectly. When the3 Mike Jacobs, Holocaust Survivor: Mike Jacobs’ Triumph over Tragedy (Eakin Press, 2001), 30-31.xi

child is born that knowledge is lost, and one must spend his or her life trying to findit again. That’s what I felt like I was doing in the cemeteries. When I brushed myfingers over the worn Hebrew on the stone tablets, I felt a shock in my soul that canonly be described as hearing HaShem’s words for the first time, again.As days turned to weeks and months, I worked in the cemeteries with Petr.As I uncovered headstones, pieced together broken fragments, and pulled weeds,my hamsa was with me. As it twisted and danced with my movements, it wasbrought to life by the memories it had been charged to keep. I may never know theorigin of my connection to the cemeteries - although I am partial to theaforementioned fable - but I understand my hamsa as the bridge that connects mymemory with action. Author Colleen McDannell utilizes the “Bible in the Victorianhome” to explain an object’s physical power to contain religious emotion andmemory. 4 Similarly, my hamsa acts as a bank safe, collecting and saving certainsentiments and bonds of memories. Its literal closeness activates personalmemories much like the Family Bible hymns sing of Bibles “pressed” and “clasped”to the body. 5 The hamsa symbolizes the layers of my faith and it reminds me what ismost valued in my life. It was also my only companion and keeper of my memoriesin Poland and the Czech Republic. Peter Burke understands that material culture isall about relationships. 6 Objects don’t make any noise on their own: they needinteraction in order to speak. My hamsa joined me later in my life - it wasn’t an4 Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (Yale UniversityPress, 1998), 67-102.5 Ibid., 85.6 See Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images As Historical Evidence (Cornell University Press,2007).xii

heirloom or cherished family possession - but it accompanied me on a journey thatundeniably created and defined its identity for me. Today, it continues to swayaround my neck. The silver is tarnished and gives off the appearance of lead. Itgives the charm a worn look to complement its rare collection of memories.____________________This introduction to the thesis is part autobiography and part methodology.While the travel seminar wasn’t my entry point into Holocaust studies, it was myfirst encounter with the Holocaust sites of Europe. It allowed me to experiencethese locations as museums and monuments, and meditate on meaning embeddedin silver and stone. Across cultural, religious, and language barriers, I had a sharedcommitment to something. Specific to this study, the account of my hamsa serves todescribe the possibilities of material culture as story-teller and story-collector. Thestory serves to pose foundational questions: What does the object look like? What isit made out of? What condition is it in? What can the language tell us about thisobject? What can tradition tell us about the importance of this object? The storyalso drives us to more probing questions: In a location bereft of Jews, how does oneconnect with Jewish history? Why is this object attached to this story? And, howdoes this object embody memories? All of these questions help to create arelationship to and a personal value system from the object.My hamsa is attached to a particular place and time, but it also has come tocarry a series of events and personal transformations that occurred during thatxiii

time. It resides simultaneously in the past and the future, links them, and definesmeaning for both. 7 It is a repository of new experiences and personal growth whichin time becomes personal memory. The selective nature of purchase and collectionidentify my hamsa as a personal choice and a personal marker. At different pointsin my life, being “Jewish” was imposed on me. Now, it could be on my terms with myinitial authority. This observation that I had power over the presentation of thethings that identified me is similar to Stephen Weil’s young “Kelly” character and hisrevelation that, through the collection and ordering of materials, he could “raisekings and topple kingdoms. . . . Deity stirred within him.” 8 A material integratedwith experience, meaning, and self helps generate identity. Experience of place, plusaction, plus material object creates a visceral, emotional, and permanent connection.The cemetery restoration project linked me with a specific Jewish past that wasn’tdirectly mine by cultivating these relationships among memory, material, andaction.An individual, as well as an institution, has the ability to create or destroyrelationships, narratives, and identity. Just as Weil explains that there is greatpower that accompanies collecting, there is great power that accompaniesownership. 9 Narrative, and especially historical narrative, deeply aids the formationand presentation of identity. What we decide to keep matters, and what we decideto omit matters as well. This Hamsa story has presented the narrative I wanted it to7 Ellen Smith, Advisory Thesis Meeting, Brandeis University, April 2, 2012.8 Stephen E. Weil, “The Great and Renowned Kelly Sock Collection: A Fable” in A Cabinet of Curiosities:Inquires into Museums and their Prospects (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 128-129.9 See Weil, “The Great and Renowned Kelly Sock Collection,” 127-131. The power discussed here, in anindividual or institution, is the party’s ability to create hierarchy.xiv

offer, the memory I choose to keep, and the only knowledge of the events you, thereader, can have. I chose to omit the episode with the Czech college students at alocal pub, I cut the scene with the antisemitic volunteer in the cemetery, and I leftout my day trip to play golf on the former Rothschild estate. Self-censorship isalways at play as narrative gives you the power to construct the story you want toconstruct. My hamsa contains private memories, but through expressed narrative itbecomes a public identity marker. At that point, it may be accessed and respondedto by an audience. In the public ether, a specific and stylized narrative is subjectedto the variety of audience responses and the range and fluidity of meaning. Anaudience forms a relationship with the narrative, the object, and the peopleinvolved; each with varying layers of accessibility and meaning. But in its genesis asan exhibited possession, my hamsa tells my narrative because I made that choice.Memory and identity are something we create, frameworks we construct, andnarratives we enact. So it is with American Holocaust museum narratives, thecentral story of this thesis.xv

Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABSTRACTPROLOGUEiiivviiINTRODUCTION 1UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MUSEUMS 6Holocaust Museums in AmericaTHE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM – A CASE STUDY 17Location, Location, LocationCreation and Dissemination of NarrativeTour PerformanceFinal MessageTHE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: A LIVING MEMORIAL TO THEHOLOCAUST – A CASE STUDY 46What’s in a Name?The Origin of Narrative: The Mission StatementTour PerformanceFinal MessageEXHIBITING THE HOLOCAUST, EXHIBITING THE SELF 67BIBLIOGRAPHY 79xvi

IntroductionThis study attempts to position American Holocaust memorialization withinthe context of the key American Holocaust museum narratives, tour scripts, andexhibition displays. The personal story recounted in this thesis’ preface may serveas a microcosm of the museum’s ability to construct and control its own narrativeand so create both a particular Holocaust memory and a post-Holocaust Americanidentity. The two museums central to this study – the United States HolocaustMemorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of JewishHeritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (MJH) in New York City – shed light onthe American, Jewish, and Jewish-American understandings of the EuropeanHolocaust. Both institutions consciously attempt to intersect and merge Americanand Jewish ideals, interests, and values, often with one perspective dominatinganother for specific purposes to be discussed.The post-Holocaust American identity in this study is the unique perspectiveof a foreign entity imposing its democratic principles on the events of the Holocaust.The “American” values detailed in the Declaration of Independence inform the studyof this history. This identity attempts to use “certain inalienable rights” to create astory of universal significance. The post-Holocaust Jewish American identitydisplays similar perspectives as the post-Holocaust American identity, but with thesignificant added difference of a Jewish experience and viewpoint that makes the1

study of the Holocaust more of an insider or personal account. While the museumsbeing studied are directed at a Jewish experience, they also attempt to create auniversal meaning. A Holocaust museum’s institutional identity, then, is the officialcollaboration and combination of a post-Holocaust identity and a location. Theinstitutional identity signals its mission and narrative.Since their dedications – the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 andthe Museum of Jewish Heritage in 1997 – these museums have welcomed acombined estimated total of 31.5 million visitors. 10 Of that number at least onethirdare school children on educational field trips. At the Museum of JewishHeritage, these students take guided tours in the form of a docent-led tour, a grouptour, or gallery lecture. These docent tours in particular have become an“educational mainstay” of museums worldwide. 11 Docent tours incorporate an oraland a visual presentation of information found within the museum. At the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum, the tour is self-guided and facilitated by theinformational panels of the exhibit. Many of these audience visits, and the majorityof these tours, represent the visitors’ first experiences in a museum about theHolocaust. Therefore the education patrons receive is not only important to furtherlines of personal inquiry, but it is important to the ways in which patrons situate10 Since 1993, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has welcomed more than 30 million visitors,including more than 9 million school children and 91 heads of state. Today, 90 percent of the USHMM’svisitors are not Jewish. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "About the Museum,"http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/.Since 1997, the Museum of Jewish Heritage has welcomed over 1.5 million visitors from all around theworld. According to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Overview,”http://www.mjhnyc.org/a_overview.html.11 Denise Lauzier Stone, “A Comparative Study of Two Art Museum Tours and Their Impact on AdultLearning,” Visual Arts Research 23, no. 1 (45) (Spring 1997): 142.2

themselves in regard to the event, experience, and memorialization of the Holocaust.As student and adult groups are led through the museum, they receive a version ofmediated history as well as a window into an institution’s understanding of itself –both with the conscious intention of shaping the visitor’s understanding of andresponse to the Holocaust. 12By studying the narrative scripts of these tours found within the coreexhibitions of two of the largest Holocaust museums in America, we may betterunderstand how these museums present their specific position of post-Holocaustidentity. Situated in bastions of American heritage, the U.S. Holocaust MemorialMuseum in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York Cityoffer ideal sites for this investigation. Museums in general, and these museums inparticular, are places “where Americans first learn, and later reassure themselves,about their culture, history, environment, or technology.” 13 These museums havedeveloped intentionally constructed narratives that reflect specific educational,cultural, social, national, and political goals and in doing so tell us deep truths aboutinstitutional identity construction, the process of memory collecting, and thepresentation of mediated histories.The first chapter of this thesis discusses the impact and influence museumshave on society. It looks at museums in general as public-centric institutionsinterested in conveying a specific and focused message. It also examines thephenomenon of Holocaust museums in America and how they relate to the grand12 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2, 2012.13 Timothy W. Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition (University of Minnesota Press,2002), xvi.3

study of history. The second chapter examines the U.S. Holocaust MemorialMuseum, its mission, and its self-guided tour method. Here, the museum’s tournarrative is unpacked and understood as a facilitator for American institutionalidentity. Chapter three focuses on the Museum of Jewish Heritage, its educationalmission, and its inquiry-based tour method. Similarly, its tour script will be studiedas a presentation of Jewish-American institutional identity. Both of the museums’locations, tour styles, information, and target audiences will play a central role intheir respective narratives. The final chapter explains the importance ofunderstanding these Holocaust museums as political institutions with narrativesthat support their political goals. This section compares the differences in thenarrative identities of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Museum ofJewish Heritage. There is also a discussion of the museums’ responsibilities to thepublic and the possible purposes of Holocaust museums in the future. Lastly, thischapter reiterates the themes of memory, narrative, and identity in order todeliberate on the subjectivity and limits of Holocaust museums and the legacy ofHolocaust memory in America today.Methodologically, this thesis is the product of on-site research at the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage and extensivetouring of each institution’s principal exhibitions. At the U.S. Holocaust MemorialMuseum, the Wexner Center provided access to the resources used in thepermanent exhibition. The Library and Archival Collections located in the Centerfor Advanced Holocaust Studies provided a closer look at the museum’s history andthe formation of the permanent exhibition. At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I was4

granted an intimate experience by being named a spring 2012 Lipper Intern for theLipper Intern School Partnership Program. This program connects interns withpublic secondary schools throughout the Northeast in order to teach about theHolocaust and Jewish heritage. As an intern, I participated in a training workshop atthe museum where I studied the “Meeting Hate with Humanity: Life during theHolocaust” tour script in particular, and the museum’s collections, exhibitions, andeducation departments in general. I also led museum tours to a variety of schoolsfrom Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. The secondaryreadings and research influential in this project include: studies on Holocausthistory; America and the Holocaust; approaches to studying and interpreting theHolocaust; pedagogical practices and educational principles in teaching theHolocaust; narrative and meaning in Holocaust memorials and museums; museumpolitic; and the limits and possibilities of contemporary museums.5

1) Under the Influence of Museums“The mere choice of facts presented in an exhibitionoffers a definite point of view. When selecting historicaldata, one must consider what to exclude, what toemphasize and why. . . . A statement made by a museumcarries great weight. It implies final authority andeternal remembrance.”- Martin Weyl, Director, Israel Museum,New York Times, June 11, 1989 14Museums are a crucial tool used by society to depict the present andremember the past. As places of public instruction, collective imagination, andpersonal reflection, museums influence the ways in which nations and individualsdefine and represent themselves. Museums today differ from their predecessors inthat they are no longer cabinets of curiosities that “merely provide a pleasant refugefrom ordinary life, nor are they simply repositories of received wisdom.” 15 In thenineteenth century, many major museums served as “vital outposts for the civilizingmission of that time’s ‘pedagogical state’.” 16 Today, museums continue to act asantennas or outposts for a variety of social, political, and cultural trends. Museumsare not simply about presenting objects, but they are about transmitting a message.Museums and their exhibitions offer order, meaning, and influence. Part of theinstitutions’ power lies in the influence they can have over an audience’s perception14 Martin Weyl, “How Do Museums Speak the Unspeakable?” (The New York Times, June 11, 1989)15 Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay toSensation (New York University Press, 1999), 5.16 Luke, Museum Politics, xiv.6

of a historical event. The purpose of museums, which is becoming more publiccentricevery day, is to situate ideas with and within items. The art of the metonym,as Barbara Kishenblatt-Gimblett maintains, “accepts the inherently fragmentarynature of the object” or item. 17 It is a part that stands in for a whole. Artistically,this is not an attempt to re-create environments, but re-create memories.Educationally, it is an attempt to re-create ideas. Museums have the ability to“solidify culture” and “endow it with a tangibility, in a way few other things do.” 18Exhibitions and collections can teach, inspire, and honor. They can act as a conduitto the past and to memorialization. They have the ability to challenge a communityand to engender conversation. Yet, museums can only engage in these actions ifthey can form significant relationships with their patrons. Audiences are not tabularasa; they experience museum narratives in the context of their own personalexperiences. Audience perception can challenge and alter an institutionallyconstructed message, and museums understand this in their attempts to generateeducational, entertaining, and aesthetic displays.Every museum tries to stimulate curiosity by “present[ing] an artful displayof artifacts and ideas to entertain and educate its visitors.” 19 Engendering curiosityis still a mainstay technique from the culture of some of the earliest museums. It isthis element that holds the strongest pull to define museums as entertainmentcenters. Their power to define and legitimize a particular narrative defines theseinstitutions at worst as manipulators and at best as stylized public textbooks. As17 Barbara Kishenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (University ofCalifornia Press, 1998), 19.18 Dubin, Displays of Power, 3.19 Luke, Museum Politics, 228.7

Timothy Luke contends, “[Museum exhibitions are] a materialized ideologicalnarrative, fabricating its own focalized normative code of practices and values out ofpeculiarly arranged displays with historical artifacts, corporate products, naturalorganisms, technological devices, or art works.” 20In general, a museum’s role is constructed by its creators, producers,curators, educators, and funders and then takes on the challenge of convincing itspublic that such a role is legitimate. In public institutions, like the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, these “constructors” stillmaintain an authoritative role, yet its relationship with the public is more symbiotic.That is, the role is conferred on them by a willing public and then the museum mustcontinue to legitimate its role to its constituents and its patrons.Most current debates about memorialization, monuments, and museumsrevolve around competing narratives. Every institution constructs anddisseminates their narrative based on a range of influences: self-interest, choice,perspective, privilege, needs, audience, and varying other categories, in order toshape and influence its patrons toward particular perspectives and practices. 21 Thegoals and techniques of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Museum ofJewish Heritage in these efforts are the subject of this study.Holocaust museums are a strong place to conduct this study of post-Holocaust American identity because these institutions use objects and tournarratives as entry points for understanding the perceived values andcircumstances of the past as well as the aspirational values and circumstances of the20 Luke, Museum Politics, 228.21 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2, 2012.8

present. “Material objects matter,” explains scholar Ann Smart Martin, “becausethey are complex, symbolic bundles of social, cultural, and individual meaningsfused into something we can touch, see, and own.” 22 Throughout history, peoplehave been studied and identified through the objects which they make, buy, own,use, and display. While the majority of objects in individuals’ lives are used, ratherthan displayed on a museum pedestal, they are nonetheless publically presented. 23For example, my hamsa makes the translation from personal use to official publicdisplay the moment it becomes visible around my neck and its narrative transitionsfrom penned to published. The private and institutional context of a selected objectimposes huge changes and perceptions on them, but both are selective displays, andboth illuminate an exhibition of identity through material manifestation. Purchasesand subsequent displays are by no means arbitrary. The material world isintentional; individuals and institutions give context to and form complexrelationships with objects. The ownership of an item confirms the identityassociated with it. In the realm of the individual, Samuel Heilman explains, “What Ibuy or own displays what I am.” 24 This statement easily makes the transformationinto the realm of the communal: “What [museums] buy or own displays what[museums] are.”In this study, I am not attempting to write a comprehensive history from amaterial culture source, but rather to write about museums about history (and more22 Ann Smart Martin, “Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework,”Winterthur Portfolio 28, no. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1993): 141.23 André Malraux, Museum Without Walls (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967).24 Samuel Heilman, “Jews and Judaica: Who Owns and Buys What?,” Persistence and Flexibility:Anthropological Perspectives on the American Jewish Experience, ed. Walter P. Zenner (SUNY Press,1988): 261.9

specifically about museum narrative scripts about history). Museum tours combineoral and visual presentation elements to discuss the objects within an institutionthat define its values and identity. Today, more and more museums incorporate“museum educators” – those with a significant knowledge of the institution’scollection and the institution’s mission statement, and with some degree ofpedagogical training and skills – to present their exhibition of history. Theseeducators present and perform the tour scripts and, like the objects on display andthe official mission statement before them, provide carefully constructed butvaluable portals into consciously presented history and identity.In an increasingly demanding socially, culturally, and educationally mindedsociety, the role of the museum, the museum educator, and the museum tour scriptis as important as it has ever been. 25 It is precisely for this reason that we, as asociety, must consider the dialogue between museological memory, narrative, andidentity in order to productively situate ourselves as coherent, understandable, andvaluable human beings in the world.Holocaust Museums in AmericaGreig Crysler and Abidin Kusno define a Holocaust museum as a “space thatcollects, classifies, and arranges artifacts, testimonies, and documentary evidence,etc., in order to present a specific audience…with a narrative or set of narratives25 According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2011) and the Museum of Jewish Heritage (2000)annual reports, the Washington museum allotted approximately 25% of their total support and revenue to“Museum and Public Programs.” The New York museum allocated roughly 26% of the budget to the“Program Services: Collections and Exhibitions and Education.” In United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum, “2010-2011 Annual Report,” www.ushmm.org/museum/press/annualreport/2011/report.pdf, andMuseum of Jewish Heritage, “2000 Annual Report,” www.sismus.org/museums/report/MJH_2000.pdf.10

about the Holocaust.” 26 Holocaust museums have generally taken upon themselvesthe tasks to educate the general public about the Holocaust, to preserve and displaycertain memories, and to combat Holocaust denial. Yet they are no moreimpervious to cultural, educational, and identity politics than any other museum orinstitution. As history is traditionally a narrative of victors, “unflattering,embarrassing, or dissonant viewpoints are typically unwanted.” 27 Collateral and“secondary” experiences are often swallowed up by those grand, epic, dominantnarratives. We often witness victory history in American public education whilestudying Christopher Columbus and the colonization of “America,” ThomasJefferson’s use of Manifest Destiny, and the U.S. involvement in the World Wars.Museums, containing “ratified claims of superiority,” subject these hidden collateralexperiences to the traditional grand or national narrative. 28 This thesis is not meantto argue for or against the inclusion of the stifled narrative, but rather to explainthat museums are always competing organizations. One museum’s history narrativeis not the narrative of history. Rather, museums practice history just as doctorspractice medicine and lawyers practice law. We should never lose sight of the factthat all narratives surround, compliment, and contradict each other, none of thembeing the definitive account of history.James E. Young makes clear the importance of the study of commemorativeforms to the grand study of history, stating, “historical inquiry [is] the combined26 Greig Crysler and Abidin Kusno, “Angels in the Temple: The Aesthetic Construction of Citizenship atUSHMM,” Art Journal 56, no. 1 (1997): 55.27 Dubin, Displays of Power, 3.28 Ibid., 3.11

study of both what happened and how it is passed down to us.” 29 The Holocaustmemorialization process encompasses not only the event, but also its transmission.In Holocaust museums, exhibits and educational tours offer history, remembrance,hope, and unity in the form of community building. Both the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage situate the Holocaust in this“redemptive endeavor” of community building. 30 The U.S. Holocaust MemorialMuseum attempts to define America based on the events of the Holocaust “overthere.” The museum identifies the tragedy of the Holocaust as a clear victory for thesuperiority of American ideals and values. The Museum of Jewish Heritage attemptsto understand Jewish heritage based on the events of the Holocaust “within personalmemory.” The museum identifies the tragedy of the Holocaust within the greaternarrative of 20 th century Jewish life and the loss of humans and humanity thatimpacts us all. The approach reinforces the American narrative that individuals areimportant, and define the state – not vice-versa. In both cases, these “American”messages are global and generalizable. 31 The museums’ constructed narrativesfocus on a particular people in a particular time in a foreign place, but transcendthese borders to convey a relatable, U.S. nationalistic, and humanistic message.In this case study, the struggle over representation and interpretation mightnot carry the same weight of the so-called “culture wars of the late 1980s and1990s,” but they nonetheless reveal important information about the displays of29 James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art andArchitecture (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000), 11.30 Whereas strictly artistic memorialization efforts are often categorized as part of an anti-redemptivemovement, museum educational and curatorial departments are understood as redemptive endeavors.31 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2 and 23, 2012.12

history exhibited. 32 Based on physical location (the National Mall), core exhibition(The Holocaust: Nazi Assault, Final Solution, and Last Chapter), and primary missionstatement (devoid of any mention of “Jews”) of the U.S. Holocaust MemorialMuseum, it can be surmised that it is an American institution whose primaryobligation is the dissemination of “Holocaust knowledge” as it affected and effects ageneralized American audience. Conversely, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, whosephysical location (New York City, with sightlines to the Statue of Liberty and EllisIsland) and core exhibition (Jewish Life A Century Ago, The War Against the Jews,and Jewish Renewal) operates exclusively as a “living memorial” to the six millionJewish victims of the Holocaust and presents a narrative of Jewish community andcontinuity defining the museum as a Jewish or Jewish-American institution.Questions of “uniqueness” abound when teaching and presenting Holocausthistory. Holocaust museums must question and determine if their unique narrativewill create a hierarchy of suffering of Holocaust narratives or of other genocidalevents. Yet, the number of Holocaust museums, and moreover, the number ofHolocaust museums in America, describes a society specifically interested inHolocaust study. 33 Many students and scholars question, “Why feature or privilegethe Holocaust over any other attack on humanity?” Its alleged uniqueness cries“never again,” yet genocide has and is happening again. If the Holocaust is unique orparticular in some fashion, yet mass killing and systematic genocide are notexclusive to Nazi Europe, then what is the unique element? One could argue that the32 For information regarding the “culture wars” and the ways in which “symbolic politics…replac[ed]realpolitik” see Dubin, Displays of Power, 2.33 This interested in Holocaust study stems from a combination of the American Holocaust survivors andthe Jewish community as well as local and national governments finding the study political advantageous.For more information see Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).13

overwhelming uniqueness lies in its aftermath: the quantity of museums,memorials, and public Holocaust education institutions that have been created onAmerican soil. 34 One is hard-pressed to find another American institution thatfocuses directly on an event that did not take place on American soil and that did notfeature an American presence for the majority of the event. While it is true that alarge number of Holocaust survivors immigrated to the United States, thephenomenon of the American Holocaust museum is no less curious. 35 The presenceof survivors in America cannot solely explain the number of American Holocaustinstitutions.For most Americans, the Holocaust as an event took place on a differentcontinent in a different time. This geographical and temporal distance allowsAmerican museums to view the Holocaust through a conscious institutionalizedlens, whether through an American or Jewish-American lens. The U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum understands America’s primary role in the Holocaust as aliberator. Americans liberated the Jews of Europe, but more so, liberated Europefrom Nazism. American values, such as democracy and the unalienable rights of theindividual, are “antithetical to the values of the Nazi state,” and therefore the easiestto display in concrete terms. 36 The U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum valorizes34 Other “unique” elements surely include the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946 as well as the creation of theState of Israel in 1948, but for this study, the Holocaust as an American phenomenon is undoubtedly aunique situation.35 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Shoah Foundation document roughly 300,000Holocaust survivors that immigrated to America. See Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: TheStruggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York: Viking, 1995).36 Alexandria Fanjoy, “Mapping a Blindspot: Perpetrators, Shoah, and American Jewish HolocaustEducation” (MA Thesis, Brandeis University, 2011), 14. Fanjoy argues that this core contrast implies thatthe Holocaust is something that could never happen in the United States.14

freedom and liberty while it demonizes the Nazi political theory as restrictive,unjust, and inhumane.The Museum of Jewish Heritage illuminates the centrality of Jews andJudaism in the Holocaust. In terms of the Holocaust, this museum displays Jews asvictims, resisters, survivors, and immigrants. The core exhibition also showcasesthe Jewish religious and cultural artifacts and the lives of the once thrivingEuropean Jewish communities. As a museum in New York City, it too, is afforded thedistance to speak about the Holocaust through an American lens. However, thisinstitution understands its presentation of Holocaust history as specifically Jewish.In the years prior to any Holocaust museum in America, Lucy Dawidowicz inRonald Berger’s Fathoming the Holocaust spoke in favor of New York as the site for anational Holocaust museum, arguing that it was the “center of the Jewish populationin the United States and the cultural crossroads of the modern world.” 37 Proponentsof a national museum in Washington, D.C. felt that it would locate the Holocaustdeep within American national memory and an American national identity. Nowwith a major Holocaust museum in each location, hindsight allows us to declare thatboth arguments were workable and relevant. Site selection is equivalent to selfcensorshipby a leadership to emphasize the positive aspects of the role of theUnited States or the positive aspects of the American-Jewish community. 38 Museumlocation possesses a power to “shape collective values and social understandings in37 Ronald, J. Berger, Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach (New Brunswick: TransactionPublishers, 2002), 161.38 Rochelle G. Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember: The Politics Behind New York City's HolocaustMuseum (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1996), 9.15

a decisively important fashion.” 39 After the creation of a mission, selection of alocation, and organization of an exhibition, the tour narrative performancehighlights – on a daily and ongoing way – the museum’s social, political, and culturalperspective in a direct conversation with the visitor.39 Luke, Museum Politics, xiii.16

2) The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – A Case StudyUpon its dedication on April 22, 1993, the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum, designed by architect James Ingo Freed, became America’s nationalHolocaust museum. Located among the American monuments “to freedom on theNational Mall,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum offers a “powerful lesson in thefragility of freedom, the myth of progress, [and] the need for vigilance in preservingdemocratic values.” 40 Its inception began fifteen years earlier in 1978 when then-President Jimmy Carter announced his intention to create the President’sCommission on the Holocaust with the aim to design an American memorial to theHolocaust. 41 The result became the $147 million federally-supported U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum and its permanent place adjacent to the National Mall inWashington, D.C. This location situates the history of the Holocaust withinAmerican time and space. The narrative that it tells relies heavily on the Americanideals of democracy, pluralism, and universalism. As the museum understands itselfto contain a “unique power and authenticity,” feasibly derived from its location andgovernmental provenance, it attempts to teach people about the “dangers ofunchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide…encourage[ing] them to act,cultivating a sense of moral responsibility…so that they will respond to the40 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “About the Museum,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/. Accessed on February 17, 2012.41 See Linenthal, Preserving Memory.17

monumental challenges that confront our world.” 42 At this institution, the events ofthe Holocaust function to provide valuable lessons regarding freedom, liberty,democracy, and morality. 43 It is an American institution with a distinctly Americanvoice. As former Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum(1988-1993) and Director of the museum’s Holocaust Research Institute (1993-1997), Michael Berenbaum explains the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as “anational memorial doesn’t have the liberty to create an exclusively Jewish”presentation. 44 Undoubtedly, there is a focus on the Jewish experience of theHolocaust, but the ultimate message is less about Jewish memory and more aboutuniversal freedom and morality.A Jewish narrative is in no way subliminal at the museum. Artifacts andphotographs donated by Jewish survivors and their family members populate theexhibition cases and walls. However, the Jewish narrative is constantly second tothe American narrative; a narrative favoring a global reach in the name ofdemocracy. In that manner, the core exhibition is identical to each visitor, yet theexperience is individualized through the use of the identification card booklets. 45These booklets, separated by gender and received upon entering the core exhibition,grant visitors a constructed identity. Of the roughly 600 identity cards, the majorityare constructed Jewish identities, but the cards also construct identities out of Roma42 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “About the Museum,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/. Accessed on February 17, 2012.43 Rona Sheramy, “Defining Lessons: The Holocaust in American Jewish Education.” PhD diss. (BrandeisUniversity, 2000), 8.44 Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 22.45 For a full set of identification cards see the Wexner Learning Center located within the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum. For a small sample used by the division of education as a resource for theclassroom see http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/resource/pdf/idcards.pdf.18

and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and French Huguenot resistance fighters, amongothers. 46 The individual’s story found within the booklet is available to the visitorfrom the beginning of the exhibition, and therefore it does not have the effect ofuncovering a personal history as the larger narrative unfolds throughout themuseum. Though this lessens the impact of a constructed identity, it also reducesthe problematic nature of saying: “This is your identification card.” Thisburdensome gift, however problematic, immediately personalizes each visitor’sexperience. To uphold the values of life and liberty becomes essential as the visitoris chosen to embody this temporary identity rather than merely empathize with it.It is an attempt by the museum to “eschew forever the role of the bystander” bymaking every visitor a player in the Holocaust and a victim of Nazi policy. 47However, it is difficult to argue the ways in which the American narrative from 1933until December 7, 1941 wasn’t the narrative of a bystander. 48 In this museum,America’s non-existent and negative roles in the Holocaust are minimized for thepositive effects of American involvement, namely the military and ideological defeatof the Nazis and the liberation of the concentration camps. The liberation ofconcentration camp inmates, however, was not “by any means an Americanpriority,” yet it is “featured as though it had been one of the prime reasons forAmerica’s involvement in World War II.” 49 The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museumfilters the “master narrative of the Holocaust” through a lens that chooses to46 The identification cards are a mixture of true, fictionalized, and composite accounts of survivor andvictim stories. The number of cards is estimated online to be 600, yet one of the cards that I receivedduring my tour was numbered 5204.47 Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 171.48 In this context, I am defining “bystander” as a witness and the antithesis of a participant.49 Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember, 220.19

enhance America’s positive role during and after the Holocaust. It is also a fertileground to endorse pro-American, anti-fascist values. In other words, the museumconsolidates Holocaust experience within an American national narrative offreedom and liberation that grants the oppressed in the U.S. and abroad thatfreedom. 50Location, Location, LocationThe real estate agent’s adage about location determining success and valuerings true not only in the tourist sense (placing a museum where the most peoplewill see it and visit it; i.e. foot-traffic), but in the ideological sense as well (placing amuseum in a specific geographic area in order to reflect certain social and politicalvalues). In the nation’s capital, the Holocaust is viewed through a distinctlyAmerican venue. Reflected in the memorials and monuments that surround it (andin part, the various heads of state that visit it), the museum exists as a continuationof this larger American saga. As Berenbaum speculated prior to the museum’sopening in The World Must Know, “The [Washington] Museum will take what couldhave been the painful and parochial memories of a bereaved ethnic community [theJews] and apply them to the most basic of American values. Located adjacent to theNational Mall – surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, [the World War IIMemorial,] and the monuments of Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington – the buildingand its contents are being designed with the neighbors in mind so that theHolocaust Museum will emerge as an American institution and will speak to the50 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 23, 2012.20

national saga.” 51 In other words, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “socialconstruction of reality” – the way in which historical facts are presented – is directly“related to its official government status” and its chosen location. 52 Regardless oflocation, any reputable Holocaust museum would provide a basic history of theHolocaust and most likely a clear memorialization attempt. But, location has thepower to offer an added viewpoint and an added authority to the previouslypresented Holocaust history. This national museum is “designed to be a shrine thatprojects the political message of ‘America, the righteous.’ The message here,although the museum clearly memorializes and teaches about the Holocaust, is amore specifically American and more universal message than that of the projectedNew York museum.” 53 While this statement about an American vs. Jewish narrativeis made prior to the completion of the museum in New York City, it maintains itsintegrity today. (Although there is a universal message that can be and is drawnfrom the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s core exhibition). As visitors leaveWashington’s core exhibition, they “bump squarely into the seal of the UnitedStates” accompanying the Elie Wiesel inscription “For the dead and the living wemust bear witness.” 54 This “Americanization” of the Holocaust and Holocaustmemorialization does not make the overall message any less significant or universal,51 Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 235.Author’s note: The World War II Memorial located on the National Mall began construction on September4, 2001. It was opened to the public on April 29, 2004 and was dedicated one month later. Dedicated 11years after the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it would be plausible to suspect that the HolocaustMuseum took on many of the functions of a WWII memorial: military and political quotes that encase themuseum’s walls (inside and outside), military flags and emblems within the core lobby (the Hall ofWitness), and the images of the National Mall from the Hall of Remembrance. For more information aboutthe National WWII Memorial see, http://www.wwiimemorial.com/, Washington, D.C.52 Saidel, Never Too Late To Remember, 218.53 Ibid., 219.54 Ibid., 220.21

ut it is something that must be understood in order to fully absorb the narrativethe institution propagates, and why it can comfortably have government sanction ina nation where church and state are separated. 55Creation and Dissemination of NarrativeWhile the museum has only been open for two decades, it has welcomedmore than 30 million visitors, including more than 9 million school children. 56 Asone-third of the visitors are school children on museum tours, the tour narrativeplays a significant role in these students’ experience of the Holocaust and Holocausteducation. Due to the size of the institution and the number of students that visit,the museum elected to present the permanent exhibition using a completely selfguidedtour. 57 Using a self-guided tour is strictly a lecture style experience with thevisitor unable to interact with or contest the omnipotent voice of the museum. Thisstyle of presentation creates a constant tour script experience for each visitor: thereare no variables in the performance of the museum’s narrative.This distribution model allows the museum to reach the largest quantity ofpeople in the quickest way possible. 58 This is reflected in the museum’s mission to55 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 23, 2012.56 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “About the Museum,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/. Accessed on February 17, 2012.57 Tour guides are available for special exhibits, but they are designed to be self-guided as well. Thespecial and temporary exhibits are also beginning to experiment with technology and interactive elementsto facilitate the museum experience. The permanent exhibition has some docent led tours (usually reservedfor special groups and/or political dignitaries), but they don’t make up a large enough percentage to focuson. Interestingly for school groups, their teachers are often faced with the choice of allowing the museumto lead the students through the exhibit or to take on the role of “museum expert” themselves through theguidance of the museum’s online tools. See http://www.ushmm.org/visit/groups/information/tourguides/.58 This lecture format has seeped into the museum’s online campaign as well. According to the museum,its website receives visitors from over “100 different countries daily” with “hundreds of thousands ofonline visitors from countries with majority Muslim populations.” With this influx of online visitors from22

“broaden public understanding of the history of the Holocaust” and to serve a globalconstituency as “America’s national institution for the documentation, study, andinterpretation of Holocaust history” and to serve as America’s “memorial to themillions of people murdered during the Holocaust.” 59 It is significant to report thatthis mission statement does not mention any of the peoples involved in the eventnor does it make any mention of Jewish victims or survivors. It is as vague anduniversal as it possibly can be. The statement goes on to explain that the museum isin place to “advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy;to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors toreflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaustas well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.” 60 Again, the“memory of those who suffered” is invoked, but we are not told whose memoryspecifically. Obviously the museum has no interest in honoring or expressing thememory of those German soldiers who suffered during World War II and thecountries with majority Muslim populations, the museum is focusing on translating the website into Arabicand Farsi. Portions of the “world’s leading online authority on the Holocaust” are available in more than20 languages.The reason for the specific and lone “Muslim” inclusion can be understood as a political move. In therecent past, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the “International Conference to Reviewthe Global Vision of the Holocaust” which many scholars and news media described as a “HolocaustDenial Conference.” Other country’s with a majority Muslim population have denied, questioned, orpraised the events of the Holocaust. These claims are wholly political and often aimed at the AmericanJewish population and its power within American international policy and at the State of Israel. It seemsthat the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is attempting to present the use of education as the ultimateresponse to anti-American and antisemitic sentiments. The effectiveness of the website in this battleremains to be seen.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “About the Museum,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/. Accessed on February 17, 2012.59 USHMM, “Mission Statement,” http://www.ushmm.org/museum/mission/, Accessed on February 17,2012.60 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Mission Statement,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/mission/, Accessed on February 17, 2012.23

museum surely does not want to find itself in a “Bitburg” style controversy, yet thequestion remains: “Who is this museum for?” 61Based on its location, tour script, and visitor demographic information, themuseum is designed for non-Jewish middle and high school students andproponents of democratic citizenship. 62 The permanent exhibition moves throughthree floors, starting from the top: “Nazi Assault – 1933 to 1939,” “The ‘FinalSolution’ – 1940 to 1945,” and “Last Chapter.” 63The museum’s first reference to the Jewish victims is found within itsdefinition of the Holocaust as a “state-sponsored, systematic persecution andannihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between1933 and 1945.” 64 The museum declares that the Jews were the primary targetsand victims under Nazi tyranny, yet explicitly states the Gypsies, the handicapped,homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, the Poles, political dissidents, and Sovietprisoners of war were also targets for oppression or “destruction or decimation forracial, ethnic, or national reasons.” 65 By consciously including these other importantand silenced voices, the museum presents Holocaust history as an outsider with61 In 1985, President Ronald Reagan planned a visit with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to theBitburg Military Cemetery which contained the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-SS. There Reagan andKohl would “lay a wreath […] in the spirit of reconciliation, in a spirit of forty years of peace, in a spirit ofeconomic and military compatibility.” After public outcry from major Jewish organizations and Holocaustsurvivors, Reagan made matters worse by equating dead German soldiers with the victims of the Holocaust.See Encyclopaedia Judaica, under “Bitburg Controversy,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/.62 According to the USHMM, 90 percent of visitors are not Jewish. United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum, “About the Museum,” http://www.ushmm.org/museum/about/. Accessed on February 17, 201263 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Permanent Exhibit Guide, Washington, D.C. The guide,published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, provides a brief overview of the exhibitions threefloors and outlines major themes. The guide explains that this “self-guided exhibition…offers acomprehensive historical narrative.” Typically, visitors spend between one and three hours in theexhibition.64 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Mission Statement,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/mission/, Accessed on February 17, 2012.65 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Mission Statement,”http://www.ushmm.org/museum/mission/, Accessed on February 17, 2012.24

authority and answers. Again, America is a liberator and American life is a “meltingpot” of freedom and equality. Albert Abramson, an American Jewish lay leader andsupporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, believed that the final messageof the museum must “convey hope in order to satisfy the American public.” 66 This“happy ending syndrome” quickly, albeit incompletely, answers the question: “Whystudy this narrative?” Hope as a lesson of the Holocaust is quite important and canbe seen throughout a majority of Holocaust museums. But the ways in which thishope is conveyed in the Washington museum make it undeniably American. 67 Thehope that a future after Auschwitz will be brighter is tempered by a call to theAmerican understanding of morality and justice.Tour PerformanceThe tour begins even before one enters the permanent exhibition. In thelobby, the building sets the tone for the exhibition narrative. Exposed brick, steelbeams, concrete, black marble, and glass give the environment an industrial,oppressive, barracks-style feel. Yet the artifacts and quotes on display – the “Flagsof 20 U.S. Army Divisions Active in Liberating Nazi Concentration Camps,” excerptsfrom the Declaration of Independence, and the “National Flags of the Liberators” –bring out an inspirational and patriotic mood. 68 The museum lobby is an66 Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 251.67 The museum presents America as the happiest ending of all. Advisory Thesis Meeting 23, 2012.68 “Flags of 20 US Army Divisions Active in Liberating Nazi Concentration Camps” can be viewed fromthe 14 th street SW entrance. The Declaration of Independence quote, “All men are created equal that theyare endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; …among these are life, liberty, and the pursuitof happiness,” can be viewed from the 15 th street SW entrance. The “National Flags of the Liberators” canbe clearly viewed through the large cut-outs of the black marble. These flags – US, Canada, France, Italy25

amalgamation of Nazi cruelty and American resolution. The entire permanentexhibition is sandwiched between this dichotomy of Nazism and Americanism. The“Hall of Remembrance,” the final stop on the exhibition tour, features a memorialfire with the quote: “Here lies earth gathered from death camps, concentrationcamps, sites of mass execution, and ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and fromcemeteries of American soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.” 69 Inthis stylized mass grave, American liberators physically combine with the memoriesof these distinctly anti-American sites. This blend of earth memorializes theAmerican military and their sacrifice, but it also shows the strength of Americanideals to symbolically and literally burrow into Nazi soil in order to transform it andde-Nazify it. These American liberation narratives bookend the permanentexhibition as well as weave themselves throughout the Holocaust narrative to extollAmerican life and liberty. Moreover, it acts as a constant rationale for having aHolocaust museum in the United States, for telling an American narrative of theHolocaust, and for having a stake in Holocaust history.This American narrative of the Holocaust speaks, at times, from a Jewishtradition, but expresses it to an American-Christian and international audience. Themain quote in the lobby, “You are my witness,” is from Isaiah 43:10 and isunderstood as a victim’s plea for American response and intervention. The “you” inthe statement is directed at the 90% non-Jewish individuals who visit the museum,and the “my” represents the victims of the Holocaust.(Partisan Unit), New Zealand, Poland, UK, USSR, and Yugoslavia (Partisan Unit) – are displayed with thecorresponding camps that they liberated.69 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. Museum Exhibit, Washington, D.C.26

To understand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s presentation of aHolocaust narrative, it will be beneficial to separate this discussion into threethemes, or lenses with which the museum exhibits its artifacts and texts: Americanpresence, Jewish presence, and Nazi presence. The American presence manifestsitself through the specific American actions and reactions to the events of theHolocaust. This includes American quotes, photographs, videos, and flags, amongother artifacts. The Jewish presence in the museum exhibits itself primarily throughmemorial elements that speak from a Jewish tradition of commemoration. The Nazipresence expresses itself as the anti-America. Occasionally, Nazi artifacts andideologies are presented from a Nazi lens, but only to show the stark contrastsbetween Nazi identity and American identity. The Nazi presence is strongest in thefirst two exhibit floors, but the third overpowers with American presence. TheJewish presence is scattered throughout, but always as a subordinate to the moredominate Nazi or American presences. Jews are no longer the central players in thestory of the Holocaust. In other words, there is a focus on how the “other” – eitherperpetrator or liberator – viewed and behaved toward the victimized.The tour of the permanent exhibition begins with an Americanunderstanding of Nazi cruelty and Jewish victimhood. As elevators take visitors tothe fourth floor, a video monitor shows footage of American soldiers liberating aconcentration camp and expressing utter shock at what they had stumbled upon: “apatrol leader called in by radio and said that we have come across something thatwe are not sure what it is. It’s a big prison of some kind, and there are peoplerunning all over. Sick, dying, starved people…such a sight as that, you…you can’t27

imagine it. You, you just…things like that don’t happen.” 70 With the soldier’s voicestill ringing in the visitors’ ear, they walk into a barely lit room with theauthoritative words “The Holocaust” in black stone and a roughly 12’ by 12’photograph of the remains of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. The label reads:American troops “encounter the charred remains of prisoners.” 71 This graphicimage introduces the end of the Holocaust as the first image a visitor encounters.But, if we understand this as a distinctly American narrative then this image is reallythe beginning for American eyes. America’s first public documentation of thetotality of the Nazi death camps began with the American troops liberating thecamps. This non-chronological introduction to the Holocaust is continued throughPresident Dwight D. Eisenhower’s April 15 th , 1945 quote on his visit to Europe: “…Imade the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence ofthese things, if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to change theseallegations merely to ‘propaganda.’” 72 This quote ties in to the Isaiah quote found inthe museum’s lobby. They both discuss the importance of witnessing, whether it isfor memorial, activist, or political reasons.The American presence continues throughout the “Nazi Assault – 1933 to1939” exhibition. While the museum is particularly American in its narrative, itdoes discuss the moments of inaction by the American government. Two rooms ofvideo programs detail the American responses to the events that took place in Nazi70 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Permanent Exhibit.71 Ibid.72 Ibid. Words underlined by the museum. Eisenhower served as President of the United States from 1953until 1961. In 1945, he was designated as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and the SupremeAllied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.28

Germany from 1933-39. 73 While these videos appropriately discuss the mixture ofaction and inaction of the American government to the knowledge of Nazipersecution, the images that border the room all point to American publiccondemnation of German products, Hitler, and Nazism. This presentation coupledwith the liberator’s introduction to the Holocaust, forces an audience to view thesevideos with the knowledge that America eventually saves the Jews and defeats theNazis.This foresight is utilized again in the panel that discusses “Why Auschwitzwas not bombed” in the “Final Solution – 1940 to 1945” exhibit. 74 As a directAmerican inaction during the war years, the museum responds by detailing thepolitical climate in American at that time. In 1944, the World Jewish Congress andthe U.S. government’s War Refugee Board “forwarded requests to bomb Auschwitzto the U.S. War Department. The requests were denied.” 75 The panel goes on toexplain that on August 14 th , 1944, the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy,advised the World Jewish Congress that “such an operation could be executed onlyby the diversion of considerable air support…now engaged in decisive operationselsewhere…” 76 The War Department had ruled out using military personnel in nonmilitaryor rescue operations. The American government argued that the mosteffective way to liberate victims of Nazi oppression would be a swift end to the73 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Permanent Exhibit. Each of the three exhibit floors has an AmericanResponse video section. For the sake of brevity, I will be unable to discuss them in full detail, but theyeach present various attempts at action and inaction within America regarding Nazi Europe.74 Ibid.75 Ibid.76 Ibid.29

war. 77 McCloy added that bombing “might provoke even more vindictive action bythe Germans,” yet within the week, “the U.S. Army Air Force carried out a heavybombing of the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber (Buna) works near Auschwitz III– less than five miles away from Auschwitz-Birkenau.” 78 The United States knew ofthe Nazi killing centers by 1944, but knowledge of the Nazi killing operations hadbeen circulating prior to the McCloy-World Jewish Congress confrontation. Themuseum’s “fairness” in representing a “failure” of the American government torescue Nazi victims is only presented because the museum can display many more“successes” of the American government in condemning Nazi actions. Spatiallywithin the museum, the 1942 poster “This is Nazi brutality” produced by Americanartist Ben Shahn for the U.S. Office of War Information denounces the mass murderthat took place at Lidice. 79 In general, the entire museum acts as a “success” ofAmerican ideals and institutions in combating Nazi ideals and institutions.The “Last Chapter” exhibit details the successes of America that broughtabout the end of war. The theme that dominates this exhibit floor is “Liberation.” 8077 See Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), and David M. Kennedy,Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford University Press,1999).78 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.79 Lidice was a village in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia that was completely destroyed byNazi forces in retaliation for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. See “The History ofLidice Memorial Before Year 2000,” www.lidice-memorial.cz, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Lidice.”80 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.“Liberation: Encounter” discusses the Soviet (Majdanek and Auschwitz), British (Bergen-Belsen), andAmerican (Nordhausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald) liberation operations. The videos taken by liberatingarmies upon their arrival can be viewed by looking over a privacy wall. These videos have been hidden“due to the graphic nature” of the film footage. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gives discretion tothe audience. They have the choice to “look or not look.” There are additional videos where this privacywall warns visitors, and there are opportunities to take other paths in order to not view or experience acertain elements of the museum. In these instances, the constructed Holocaust narrative marginalizes theextent of the atrocities. Yet in other instances, graphic videos and photographs detailing Nazi violence arecentral to the tour narrative.30

The title panel “Liberation: Encounter” informs an audience that this is an outsider’sencounter of the concentration camp inmates, and not a victim’s account of theirliberation. The liberations were never a “primary objective” for the Allied armies;rather they were a “byproduct of the goal, which was to defeat Germany and itsallies.” 81 Regardless of happenstance, the museum concludes that the fact liberationoccurred is the most important element, not the how or why.After liberation, America is seen as “A New World” and becomes one of the“most favored destination[s] of Jewish Holocaust survivors.” 82 The museumexplains that from December 22, 1945 to June 1947, “a total of 22,950 DisplacedPersons were admitted to the US, 2/3 were Jewish… By 1952, 137,450 Jewishrefugees had settled in the US.” 83 During this influx of refugees to America,President Harry S. Truman politicized America as a moral compass, a justice-seeker,and a humanitarian: “There are left in Europe 1.5 million Jews, men, women, andchildren, whom the ordeal has left homeless, hungry, sick, and without assistance.These, too, are victims of the crime for which retribution will be visited upon theguilty. But neither dictates of justice nor that love of our fellowman which we arebidden to practice will be satisfied until the needs of these sufferers are met.” 8481 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.82 Ibid. The most favored destination of Jewish Holocaust survivors, the museum maintains, was Israel.83 Ibid. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia: TheAftermath of the Holocaust, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005129. In December1945, President Truman “issued a directive that loosened quota restrictions on immigration to the U.S. ofpersons displaced by the Nazi regime. Under this directive, more than 41,000 displaced personsimmigrated to the United States; approximately 28,000 were Jews. In 1948, the U.S. Congress passed theDisplaced Persons Act, which provided approximately 400,000 U.S. immigration visas for displacedpersons between January 1, 1949, and December 31, 1952. Of the 400,000 displaced persons who enteredthe U.S. under the DP Act, approximately 68,000 were Jews.”84 Ibid. Quote from February 25, 1946. In order to continuously situate and justify the American presenceduring the Holocaust the museum explains that two years later, an amended 1948 law served as a turningpoint in American immigration policy, establishing a precedent for later refugee crises.31

Speaking to a war-tired America, Truman states “[European Jews], too, are victims.”Truman painfully comes to the realization of a suffering European Jewry, yetexplains that “they,” like Americans, need justice. The guilty, which the museumcalls “the Killers,” must be brought to trial in order to “satisfy” all of the “needs ofthese sufferers.” Here, the museum discusses the Nuremberg War Crime Trials andthe subsequent verdicts. Finally, the museum presents a relatively modest“Bystanders” panel that includes three paragraphs with no artifacts or pictures hungon a blank wall. Bystanders within this panel are defined as the “majority ofEuropeans,” not a world that watched and most assuredly not America. 85 It seemsgeographic requirements are necessary in order to indict a party as a “bystander.”Yet, as a visitor can clearly see throughout the permanent and temporary exhibits,those geographic requirements disappear as technology and universal morality turnevery individual into a witness.Many of the museum’s artifacts, texts, and images prompt endless,uninterrupted fear. Yet, an audience arrives at the museum with some level offoresight towards an end to World War II and to the Holocaust. In that knowledgewhich is continuously reinforced in the permanent exhibition through nationalpride (flags, medals, and emblems), location (windows that overlook theWashington monument), and narrative (American), an audience knows of animminent American victory. On one of my research trips to the museum, Iencountered a young college-aged woman and her friends that helped demonstrate85 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. The original title which can be faintly seen fromthe faded sticker residue above the words “Bystanders” reads “The Guilt of Bystanders.” Why “The Guiltof” was removed might be insignificant or it could have been a very political process.32

this point. In the elevator at the beginning of the exhibit, this woman waspretending to be a museum employee, asking patrons to: “Come in the elevator.Your tour will start momentarily. Please let me know if you have any questions.” Allthe while, her friends were giggling in the background. The other museum visitorsrolled their eyes, but kept quiet. Once the elevator doors opened, we parted ways.That is until I saw her again on the “Final Solution – 1940 to 1945” floor, attitudeunchanged. As she crossed the glass walkway that separates the two ConcentrationCamp exhibits, she broke out into song: “The sun’ll come out, tomorrow.” I initiallysighed and chalked her approach up to immaturity. Now, I won’t deny thatimmaturity played a large role in her actions, but I think what it interesting aboutthis outburst is that it shows a visitor’s reaction to Nazi death camps with theanticipation of American victory already planted in her mind. The museumnarrative overtly discusses in text and image the American victory in Europe andthe Allied liberation of the concentration camps. The visitor’s knowledge of a“brighter tomorrow” informed her entire museum experience.Let us turn now to the ways in which a Jewish presence finds itself within themuseum. The Jewish themes are often related to memorialization attempts, andfind themselves balancing between choosing to remember life or remember howone died. In the “Nazi Assault – 1933 to 1939” exhibit, the “Lost Communities” glassetchings present the “names of towns and cities whose Jewish communities werewholly or partially lost as a result of the ‘Final Solution.’” 86 The wall preserves theJewish-given Yiddish place-names and in that act keeps the memory of a Jewish86 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.33

heritage alive. Additionally, the museum presents a “Haggadah” and a smallcollection of “Roman Vishniac Photos” with the intention of describing Jewish lifebefore the Holocaust. Here, the “Ejszyzki Shtetl Collection” is experienced by thevisitor. This photographic essay of a Lithuanian shtetl is conveyed as a JewishTalmudic mecca. It is arguably one of the only attempts by the museum to showJews as they lived and not as they died. However, this display is meant toforeshadow the ultimate destruction of the shtetl and its inhabitants. These artifactsare supplemented with one panel, “Before the Holocaust,” with two paragraphs on2,000 years of Jewish life, with a focus on 19 th century European Jewish life. Tellinga “Jewish story” is not in the museum’s interest. What was done to the Jews andother victims is what is to be presented and remembered.In the “Final Solution – 1940 to 1945” exhibit, the “End of a Shtetl” displaylinks itself to the “Ejszyzki Shtetl Collection:” The portraits once seen on theprevious floor waterfall down to the current section. They were previously viewedas portraits of the living and now they must be understood as the “final testament”of the murdered. The final paragraph on the label panel reads: “In the Jewishcalendar, the dates of the massacres were Tishrei 4 and 5, 5702. 900 years of Jewishlife and culture in Eishishok came to an end in two days. Today, no Jews live inEishishok.” 87 This display encapsulates the life and death of the town of Eishishok,while the use of the Jewish calendar remembers the community’s Jewish identityand heritage. Eerily, visitors who are currently viewing the first shtetl section walkabove visitors in the final shtetl section. Only a metal bridge divides the spaces. Just87 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.34

as the museum relates that Jewish prisoners were forced to walk on Jewishtombstones from Treblinka to a “nearby forced-labor camp,” visitors are forced to,unknowingly, walk over the lost community of Eishishok. On the lower level, thevisitor is forced to experience being that lost community, that buried heritage.The final exhibit floor, “Last Chapter,” continues this atmosphere of loss anddeath with a casting of the Remu Synagogue cemetery tombstone memorial wall inCracow. It is titled, “Europe: A Jewish Graveyard,” and connotes this sense of lostcommunities. While this memorial does grapple with grief and sadness, it does notdiscuss any forms of trauma after the Holocaust. The use of the word “Last” in the“Last Chapter” is quite definitive. No dates are given with this title, unlike itscounterparts, so it must be inferred that the “Last Chapter” deals with all of theconsequences associated with the conclusion of the Holocaust (e.g. liberation,emigration, trials, etc.). If so, this continues a narrative that completely disregardsthe ways in which trauma can resurface after the end of the traumatic event. Eventhe positive impacts of the survivor community are suppressed. The idea of a “LastChapter” creates a “happy-ending” that puts everything in its place. While it isdifficult to display an artifact that communicates memories, repression, and trauma,they are an integral part of the survivor experience and a Holocaust narrative.Finally, the Jewish presence intertwines with the American presence toconclude this “feel-good” vision of hope for humanity and the future at the “Hall ofRemembrance.” Before entering the six-sided room with its deconstructed Star ofDavid floor titles, a small sign requests audience cooperation to make this space a35

place of “reflection, contemplation, and remembrance.” 88 This room combinesJewish biblical quotes and Yizkor memorial candles with strategically placedwindows that allow the visitor to view a majestic American flag waving in the windwhile the monolithic Washington monument stands behind it. As the audiencemeditates on their experience, they are reminded that they are surrounded by“America, the beautiful” and the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” It isthe most open, well-lit, and simple room in the museum which allows the visitors tocontemplate the quotes inscribed on the walls: “Only guard yourself and guard yoursoul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things departyour heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children,and to your children’s children.” 89 This quote, as well as the others within the Hall,invokes the importance of “witnessing.” Not as a perpetrator, bystander, orEuropean Jew, but as a rescuer, a liberator, an opposer of bigotry anddiscrimination. Caryn Aviv and David Shneer write in New Jews that “After theHolocaust, and especially after the Cold War, American Jews’ notion of placementand roots changed again… In a post-Holocaust world, many American Jews came tosee Eastern Europe no longer as the real place from which to draw roots but as amythic home, not one they want to return to but one they want to bear witness to. Itis a land of Jewish ghosts and of lost cultures.” 90 The Jewish heritage known beforethe Holocaust was destroyed, but those who witnessed it then and witness it88 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.89 Deut. 4:9. The other quotes are Deut. 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to witness this day; I have putbefore you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life – that you and your offspring shall live,” andGen. 4:10.90 Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York University Press,2005), 9. Italics added by author.36

through the museum narrative now must internalize and convey their witnessing.“To be witness” to the events of the Holocaust as one who has invited its memory “isan exercise in conscience.” 91 Not only that, but the museum concludes that theAmerican ideals of life, liberty, and freedom were under attack during the Holocaustyet, “witnessing” is the first step towards remembrance and then positive action inthe future.The final element of the museum’s tour performance is the Nazi presence.There is a strong focus on the rise of Nazism and Nazi terror. First, take the name ofthe first exhibit floor, “Nazi Assault – 1933 to 1939.” This is a narrative where Naziaggression is favored over Jewish/victim experience as the way to disseminateHolocaust knowledge. It is an account where Nazi images dominate. The “NaziSociety,” “Police State,” and “Nazi Propaganda” panels display a SA uniform,photographs of Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses, and audio of Reich Minister ofPropaganda Joseph Goebbels. All these artifacts serve the museum’s message of aNazi Germany that is the antithesis of America. In a video in this section, Hitlerspeaks to the Hitler Youth. The camera angle depicts Hitler as a booming, neoclassicalhero and the Hitler Youth are shown as innocent yet noble. They stand ontheir toes to listen to their father figure, Hitler. They know only to obey orders fromthe Fuehrer, to become strong and powerful through “Aryan” unity. Hitler explains,“You are Germany… [You] must not collapse.” 92 In the context of the museum, thisdisplay powerfully depicts a Nazi monopoly on German society. Nazism is a91 Harold Kaplan, Conscience and Memory: Meditations in a Museum of the Holocaust (University ofChicago Press, 1994), 162.92 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit.37

ainwashing, restricting, and inhumane state. To show the Nazi indoctrination ofchildren is to show the potential longevity of the Nazi party and Nazi policy: all themore reason, as an American audience, to applaud the victory of American idealsand morals. For, as President Eisenhower stated above, Nazism was not only anattack against European Jews and other specifically targeted groups, but it was adirect confrontation with opposing American values.As visitors enter the “Final Solution – 1940 to 1945” exhibit, they walkstraight into life-sized photo panels with accompanying wooden walking paths tosimulate the Lódź ghetto. Visitors are required to walk through the quasireconstructionwhile reading large quotes from Hitler and Nazi officials on thewalls. 93 This experience borders on reenactment as the full-scale images of ghettoinmates elicit feelings of oppression and fear. The Nazi presence dominates theseimages of Jews “under their control.” The sculpture of Crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau by Mieczyslaw Stobierski details the process of the Zyklon B gassing andcremating of camp inmates. In it the audience receives a bird’s eye view of thekilling procedure; witnessing the inevitable murder of these figurines. The “hidden”videos behind the privacy walls also display the ways in which Nazis understoodand viewed their victims. Videos of the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, andmedical experiments within the killing centers further broadcast the depths of Nazicruelty and brutality. The medical experiments in particular had no concern for93 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. While this area of the museum must beexperienced in order to continue the exhibit, other elements of the museum allow for visitors to choosetheir level of participation, such as the graphic videos behind noted privacy walls and the additional pathoff the side of the railcar.38

ethical limits, the Hippocratic Oath, or legitimate science. 94 To an Americanaudience, these killings and experiments are viewed as lawless and barbaric. It isthe realization that phobia, indifference, and opportunity can rewrite reality andturn medical professionals into precise killers. Yet, medical profession and theHippocratic Oath are universal, and therefore aid in creating a relatability factor forAmerican viewers.The Nazi presence also finds itself in relatively emotionless map displays ofthe German war effort with some panels discussing Germany’s annexations andexpansions. The “Last Chapter” exhibit, also, shows European maps of Germanmilitary collapse. While these occupied zones had grim consequences for “enemiesof the state,” the museum discusses the expansion and contraction maps inmilitaristic terms. 95 (Information about the ghettoization, deportation, andinstitution of the Final Solution of Nazi targets is not offered until much later in theexhibit).Jews became the Nazis “main target, but hundreds of thousands of otherswere oppressed as ‘enemies of the state.’” 96 The museum exhibits Pastor MartinNiemöller’s typewriter and a Roma wagon in order to show the discriminatoryreach of the Nazi party. In exhibiting the “prisoners of the camps,” these previously94 See Robert J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (Basic Books,2000), and James M. Glass, “Life Unworthy of Life:” Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler’s Germany(Basic Books, 1997)95 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. “Enemies of the State” according to the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum include: political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, andfreemasons. The handicapped (mentally and physically) and the Polish people, each have an exhibit panelthat discusses the terror against them. The handicapped panel displays information about forcedsterilizations and the Operation T4 (“Euthanasia” Killings). The Poles panel explains that Nazis conductedmass killing campaigns “against the country’s intelligentsia and suspected resistance fighters.”96 Ibid.39

stated “enemies of the state” make another appearance. Images of their prison mugshotsimultaneously show how they were viewed by “the other” and show thediversity of the Nazi enemy. The “Tattoos” photo display illuminates tattooednumbers on arms on a black backdrop. These arms don’t belong to bodies, faces, oridentities. There are four faces in the middle which help to remind the visitor of thepersonhood attached to these arms, but the overall display conveys a message ofNazi dehumanization. Yet the message is complicated, as the “severed” arms give anaudience the imaginative control to complete the missing body creating an“American” or personal representation of the Holocaust.Even though the main target of Nazi aggression was the Jews, the museum isdevoted to informing an American audience about the variety of groups underattack. This purpose is three-fold: 1) to attempt to tell as many of the histories ofthe Holocaust as possible (one of the advantages of a large scale museum); 2) touniversalize evil in order to relate it to an American audience; 3) to showcase thediversity of sufferers in order to relate it to an American audience.In continuing to transmit a simultaneous pro-American/anti-Nazi valuesystem, the majority of the exhibits are devoted to showing the ways in which theNazis viewed the Jews. 97 Although the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New Yorkabstains from a major “Nazi presence” in its core exhibition, the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum believes that it is irresponsible to not immerse an audience inthe depths of Nazi prejudice and violence; if not for the sole reason of juxtaposing97 Many of these exhibits also show the ways in which non-Jews might view Jews. For instance, a prayerRabbi Leo Baeck wrote for Yom Kippur 1938 is referred to as a prayer for the “Jewish Day of Atonement.”This translation further attests to the attempts at relating a Jewish story or tradition to an Americanaudience. It is interesting to see the moments in the museum that omit a Jewish presence and then themoments where they are the most important message (e.g. the “Ejszyzki Shtetl Collection”).40

Nazi values with American values. In the Kristallnacht display, Torah scrolls areshown scattered, unfurled, and piled on top of each other. They are arranged toshow the way in which Nazis would have ripped them from synagogues and set fireto them in the streets. This display powerfully shows that the Nazis desecratedTorah scrolls, but it does not adequately show how Jews used them and what theymeant to those who read from them every Shabbat morning. In the “Final Solution –1940 to 1945” section, a tallit is titled as a “victim’s belongings.” 98 Again, there is noother importance to this religious item other than it was a possession of a Nazivictim. The 90% non-Jewish audience has two choices when they view this artifact.They may see the tallit just as the Nazis would have, as an unimportant possession.Or, they may transcend its religious context and view it as an important possession,like any possession. Not mentioned is the fact that a visitor could very well arrive atthe museum with an understanding of Jewish heritage and tradition, and thereforesee the tallit in its religious context. But, the museum displayed this tallit to tell thestory of the Nazi institution of the Final Solution. It is not a tallit that is allowed totell the story of its life prior to the Holocaust. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museumbelieves that it can tell the story of the Holocaust and the story of its Jewish victimswithout discussing the importance of the Jewish ritual items that are displayedwhich stands in glaring contrast to the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A LivingMemorial to the Holocaust.98 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. Additionally, in the “Last Chapter” exhibitfloor, prisoner uniforms are given the title “The Victims.”41

Final MessageAlain Resnais’s documentary feature, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog,1955), displays a world haunted by the memory of Auschwitz. 99 In creating apowerful, relatable narrative about the disturbing depths of inhumanity, Resnaisuniversalizes the Holocaust in order to create a collective accountability. The U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum, like Night and Fog, is a memorialization of lost souls,but more than that it is a meditation on the questions, doubts, and fears an eventlike the Holocaust can conjure up. While the Holocaust museum in Washingtoninvestigates the cyclical nature of violence, it presents the conclusion that suchhorrors couldn’t happen on American soil. As Michael Berenbaum states, “WhenAmerica is at its best, the Holocaust is impossible in the United States.” 100 Becauseof this national impossibility, the museum instead charges its audience with a globalmoral responsibility. This call to remembrance and action is revealed on the wallsof the Hall of Remembrance through the biblical quote “Hark, they brother’s bloodcries out to me from the ground!” 101 The museum presents the Holocaust narrativeas not just a Jewish affair, but a human affair. In the context of this museum,99 Made ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Night and Fog was commissionedby the Comite d'Histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale (a government commission assigned to the taskof assembling documentary material on, and of launching historical inquiries and studies in, the period ofthe French Occupation) and the Reseau de Souvenir (an association devoted to the memory of those whodied in the camps).100 Philip Gourevitch, "Behold now behemoth: the Holocaust Memorial Museum: one more Americantheme park," Harper’s Magazine (July 1, 1993): 55-62. Gourevitch responded to Berenbaum’s commentby asserting, “The fact remains, however, that the Holocaust was a European event, and that even at itsutter worst, America has been a place where the Holocaust--a program of genocidal exterminationmandated and implemented by every organ of a nation-state--has never entered the realm of possibility.America's problems and America's faults, however extreme, have been and remain different from those offascist Germany. To suggest that there are meaningful comparisons can only distort our already feebleunderstanding of European history and--worse --obscure our perception of current American reality.”101 Gen. 4:10, and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Permanent Exhibit.42

“brother’s blood” transcends race, religion, and nationality. Americans have theduty to care for their “brothers” around the world.The use of unsettling images in the permanent exhibition makes thenarrative difficult to view at times, but the images are not presented unintentionallyor for a cheap shock. They are meant to convey a universal understanding of theextent of evil in order to illuminate responsibilities of the past and present. LikeNight and Fog, a plea for accountability and responsibility become the museum’smoral imperative. There is the responsibility for the Holocaust and a responsibilityto the Holocaust that must be accounted for. During the Nuremberg Trials, capturedin Night and Fog, a Kapo exclaims, “I am not responsible.” An officer saysdefinitively, “I am not responsible.” Another continues the refrain. Then “who,” thenarrator asks, “is responsible?” 102 While it is never explicitly stated, the film gainsits identity through its subtle indictment against all humanity. The narratorconcedes that humanity’s natural state is at war, since “war [may] nod off to sleep,but keeps one eye always open.” 103 Memory of trauma must remain fresh in acommunity’s mind if it intends to ward off future evils. In a closing soliloquy ofquestioning doubt, what Roger Sandall calls a “grave poetry of warning,” thenarrator calls out to the audience while images of broken buildings and mangledmetal and wire [images of man’s ability to destroy] overwhelm the screen: 104“Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warnof the arrival of our new executioners? Are their faces reallydifferent from our own? Somewhere in our midst, lucky Kapos still102 Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). DVD, directed by Alain Resnais (1955; France: Argos Films, USA:The Criterion Collection, 2003), 29:17.103 Ibid., 30:00.104 Roger Sandall, “Review: Night and Fog,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Spring, 1961), 44.43

survive, reinstated officers and anonymous informers. There arethose who refused to believe, or believed only for brief moments.With our sincere gaze we survey these ruins, as if the old monsterlay crushed forever beneath the rubble. We pretend to take up hopeagain as the image recedes into the past, as if we were cured onceand for all of the scourge of the camps. We pretend it all happenedonly once, at a given time and place. We turn a blind eye to whatsurrounds us and a deaf ear to humanity’s never-ending cry.” 105The conclusion of Resnais’s journey into “man’s inhumanity to man” offers acontemplation and meditation to a scarred society. A kind of “romantic horror takesplace when we gaze at the ruins of history: we try to imagine what went on in theclosed world of the concentration camps and try to relate that to our time.” 106 Infinding relatable ground, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum uses a universalunderstanding of evil and inhumanity. It is for this reason that the museum choosesto display its more graphic images of the atrocity. The museum does not spare itsaudience; they are invited to view destruction. In dark rooms with numerous videosand physically inflated images, the audience is forcibly left alone in mediation asmangled bodies are used as canvases for medical experiments, charred skeletons lieone on top of another, and a corpse’s wide-open eyes stare directly at the museum’saudience. The corpse’s soul has left his body, yet his eyes pierce and question theaudience, “Where were you? Where is your soul?”The museum takes great care in discussing the numerous victims of Naziaggression, and focuses specifically on the European Jews, yet it is not central to themuseum’s narrative of inhumanity during the Holocaust. Corpses are viewed ascorpses, regardless of religion, nationality, or ethnicity. But, does this more105 Nuit et Brouillard, 30:58.106 Ewout van der Knaap, Uncovering the Holocaust: The International Reception of Night and Fog(Wallflower Press, 2006), 7.44

universal narrative unconsciously repress the memory of a Jewish genocide? 107 Inother words, have the politics of remembrance inhibited the possibility for a Jewishnarrative in a national arena? The universalization or Americanization of theHolocaust dismisses the particularities of the event and thus makes it unidentified,but it also makes the narrative easier for an American public to digest. 108 It is notthat Jews are translated into Americans, but rather Nazis are assuredly translatedinto the anti-Americans. Harold Kaplan suggests, “In America and the West weshould remember Hitler, the ideologue, best (and know ourselves better) in hishatred for all aspects of liberal humanist democracy.” 109 As long as Nazism isunderstood as that which is anti-American, the Holocaust “will remain a permanenttouchstone” for the American people. 110107 Joshua Hirsch, Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust (Temple University Press, 2004), 28.Hirsch discusses Night and Fog as the “most important, if not the sole, originator of posttraumatic cinema.”Additionally, Hirsch contents that the film simultaneously “combat[s] the repression of memory of thecamps in France” while “paradoxically, contribut[ing] to the repression of the memory of the Jewishgenocide.”108 Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy(Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 292.109 Kaplan, Conscience and Memory, 170.110 Ibid., 170.45

3) The Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust – ACase StudyThe first Holocaust memorial in New York City was dedicated in 1946-1947. 111 Rochelle Saidel recounts in her history of New York City’s HolocaustMuseum that “in Riverside Park at West Eighty-third Street there is an engravedstone, placed there in October 1947 and intended as a cornerstone, which reads:‘This is the site for the American memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghettobattle April-May 1943 and to the 6 million Jews of Europe martyred in the cause ofhuman liberty.’” 112 For another fifty years, this would be the sole location for public,non-religious Holocaust memory and remembrance in New York City. With theopening of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in1997, an educational message combined a major museum and the mission “toremember.”111 Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember, 29. According to Saidel, there seems to be “no record of anyattempt to create a major Holocaust memorial in the United States before the first effort in New York Cityin 1946-47.”112 Ibid., 3-8. After 1978, when Holocaust memorialization was placed on the agenda of the United Statesgovernment, the idea of a Holocaust museum or memorial became “more important for the organizedJewish community and thus ripe for adoption by New York City Mayor Edward Koch.” In 1981, thecommission for a Holocaust memorial in New York City was created. However, Mayor Koch, likePresident Carter, didn’t create his Holocaust commission “in response to pressure from Jewish interestgroups. Instead, these two elected officials co-opted the issue of the memorialization of the Holocaust inorder to gain favor with the organized Jewish community and thereby obtain Jewish votes and financialbacking for their upcoming election campaigns.” In other words, the Holocaust had become politicallyadvantageous.For more information regarding the history of the creation of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, see Saidel’sNever Too Late to Remember. The book ends in the summer of 1996 as the museum is but a skeletalconstruction.46

Created as a “living memorial” to those who perished during the Holocaust,the Museum of Jewish Heritage “honors those who died by celebrating their lives –cherishing the traditions they embraced, examining their achievements and faith,and affirming the vibrant worldwide Jewish community that is their legacytoday.” 113 Here, the Shoah is constructed as the Jewish experience. It is not onlyconsidered sui generis, but an exemplar of Jewish legacy and a trial that could notdestroy the Jewish people.For a number of scholars, the narrative of this museum is generated by Jewsfor Jews in order to counteract perceived disengagement from Jewish life. 114Jeshajahu Weinberg, the first director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,believed the period of the 1970s, a time when America saw the creation of variousHolocaust memorial and educational commissions, was a “period of flourishingethnicity [and] secular Jews had a problem knowing what their center of ethnicitywas.” 115 It seems as though, for many American Jews, this ethnicity increasinglycentered on the Holocaust.However, non-Jewish school groups make up the majority of visitors to themuseum which suggests that the museum’s exhibition does not speak to anexclusively Jewish audience. It does, however, “speak Jewishly” to them.The exhibition is designed to tell a Jewish story. It focuses primarily on the20 th century European-Immigrant-Jewish experience. Each floor of the core113 Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, http://www.mjhnyc.org/findex.html,Accessed on January 5, 2012.114 See Thomas D. Fallace, The Emergence of Holocaust Education in American Schools (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, and Rona Sheramy, “DefiningLessons: The Holocaust in American Jewish Education,” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2000).115 Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember, 40.47

exhibition wrestles with life in relation to the Holocaust. The first floor, officiallytitled “Jewish Life a Century Ago,” can be understood with tragic foresight as “JewishLife Before the Holocaust.” The exhibit’s primary attempt is not to foreshadow, butrather to present a life so rich and in its own context that its loss reverberates as adeep tragedy. However, it is impossible to enter a museum with the subtitle “ALiving Memorial to the Holocaust” and not anticipate the looming destruction. Thesecond floor, “The War Against the Jews,” or Jewish life during the Holocaust, isdevoted to describing the climate in Nazi Europe and the escalation to genocide,here traced in full detail. The third floor, “Jewish Renewal,” can only be viewed fromthe deep and dark shadow cast by the Holocaust, and is therefore understood as“Jewish Life After the Holocaust.” Just as the museum’s title and the subliminal titlesassert, the main message of the museum is the “livingness” of the Jewishcommunity: “Jewish Life before the Holocaust” illuminates religious and culturalheritage; “Jewish Life after the Holocaust” discusses Jewish lives impacting socialjustice issues; and “Jewish Life during the Holocaust” expresses the ways in whichJews struggled to live and in six million cases lost their lives. The floor plan containsan inherent tension: one floor of “death” between two floors of “living.” 116 As aHolocaust memorial, one could classify this arrangement as a shroud or an attemptto hide the dead. The Museum of Jewish Heritage’s definition of a “living memorial,”however, deems this arrangement as the logical progression of a vibrant anddynamic, yet tortured and oppressed people. The museum illuminates the triumphof the Jewish people, rather than the American people, in the face of Nazi116 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2, 2012.48

victimization. This presentation proposes that the Holocaust and Holocaustmemory is characteristically a Jewish experience. Or, that through learning aboutJews and Judaism through the lens of the Holocaust it might suggest that theHolocaust is at the core of the American Jewish consciousness and Jewish cultureand identity. In the broadest sense then, it is not truly a “Holocaust Museum,” but aJewish Heritage Museum that discusses the impact of the Holocaust on Jewishheritage. Here, Jews are not just depicted as victims of the Holocaust, but as apeople whose history has surrounded, complimented, and challenged them, andwhose culture survives and continues to shape us all – Jews and non-Jews alike. 117The original exhibition concept had four central themes: “(1) “The WorldBefore,” the European and North African Jewish civilization that thrived for twothousand years before it was destroyed by the Nazis; (2) “The Holocaust,”particularly as it was experienced by the Jews, both those who perished and thosewho survived; (3) “The Aftermath,” of survival, including the plight of refugees, theestablishment of the State of Israel, and the pursuit of Nazi war criminals; and (4)“Renewal in America,” Jewish immigration to the United States from 1654 to thepresent.” 118 The addition of “Renewal in America” was not mentioned in earlierdocuments, and Saidel argues that this could have been an attempt to “define realityin a way that would ‘Americanize’ the image of the museum for the General ServicesAdministration (the administration that received the Holocaust commissionsmemorandum for lease space in the Customs House [the original planned location of117 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2, 2012.118 “A Living Memorial to the Holocaust – Museum of Jewish Heritage,” brochure of the New YorkHolocaust Memorial Commission, 1990, New York, N.Y.49

the museum, currently, the National Museum of the Native American is housedthere]) and the federal government.” 119 However in the current exhibition, the“Renewal in America” theme is integrated into the “Jewish Renewal” floor. Americaand Jewish immigration are necessary, only in the fact that they tell the larger storyof 20 th and 21 st century Jewish life. Hence the title “Jewish Renewal” is privilegedover a title that omits the word “Jewish.”Architecturally, the museum displays its distinctly Jewish identity. Thebuilding which houses the core exhibition is a hexagon which reminds, not justmuseum visitors but all of Battery Park City and those who work in and visit lowerManhattan, of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust as well as the Star ofDavid as a symbol of the Jewish faith. Viewing the building from a far, an individualcan count six tiers on the building’s roof and six square windows on each side of thehexagon. Every element of the museum’s being helps instruct institutional identityand a specifically Jewish narrative of the Holocaust.What’s in a Name?Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust; or A LivingMemorial to the Holocaust: Museum of Jewish Heritage? Prior to the 1994groundbreaking ceremony, the proposed museum became a joint city-state projectand both the mayor and the governor were given “powers of approval.” 120 NewYork State Governor Mario Cuomo attempted to change the seemingly parochialmessage and image of the museum fearing “criticism from advocates of separation119 Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember, 216.120 Ibid., 10.50

of church and state, and requests for parcels of land or air rights from otherreligious groups.” 121 He called for a toning down of the “Jewish” imagery byrenaming the museum “A Living Memorial to the Holocaust: Museum of JewishHeritage.” In early 1990s press releases and brochures, the museum identifies withthis rebranding. After the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, theNew York project retained its Jewish narrative and its “more Jewish” title. MayorKoch, “an outspokenly Jewish mayor,” described the New York project as a museumto “the Jewish Holocaust. The Museum in Washington is not.” 122The New York museum’s current title lends itself to this Jewish narrative.While the museum is a secular institution, the subject matter is Jewish history andheritage. While this is a conscious attempt to not “duplicate what is alreadyavailable in other institutions,” it is also an effort to create a safe and welcomingspace for the New York City Holocaust survivor community and their families. 123During the October 16, 1994 groundbreaking ceremony, museum trustee ErnestMichel asked during his speech, “Why, after the success in Washington, should wehave a memorial in New York?” He then answered himself, “I would like to be ableto come to this place and say Kaddish [the memorial prayer] for my parents whohave no grave.” 124 While this statement affirms Governor Cuomo’s concerns aboutthe separation of church and state at the museum, it demonstrations howideological need shapes memory and identity. New York City was the entry point toAmerica for the immigrant survivor population, and currently, is home to nearly 2121 Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember, 10.122 Ibid., 224.123 Ibid., 224.124 Ibid., 241.51

million Jews. 125 This location and population envelops the museum in specificideological and memorial goals. Every museum is “bound up with very differentpolitical aims, cultural goals, and beliefs about learning.” 126 These diverserepresentations attest to the countless ways politics, culture, memory, andeducation may be connected and understood. It is for this reason, among manyothers, that the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s way of remembering is more Jewishthan the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s.The Origin of Narrative: The Mission StatementAccording to the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s current website, “Now in itssecond decade, the Museum has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors from allover the world who come away with a message of memory and hope that is ofuniversal significance.” 127 While the message of “universal significance” isimportant in creating lessons out of the Holocaust, the museum’s mission statementemphasizes the singular importance of Jewish life and history: “The mission of theMuseum is to educate people of all ages and backgrounds about the broad tapestryof Jewish life in the 20 th and 21 st centuries—before, during, and after the Holocaust.Multiple perspectives on modern Jewish history, life, and culture are presented inthe Museum’s unique Core Exhibition.” 128125 According to the World Jewish Population Study (2002).126 Simone Schweber, “Holocaust Education,” in The International Handbook of Jewish Education, Vol. 1,ed. Helena Miller et al. (Springer, 2011), 475.127 Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Overview,” http://www.mjhnyc.org/a_overview.html, Accessed onJanuary 5, 2012.128 Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Mission.” www.mjhnyc.org. Accessed January 5, 2012.52

Since the museum first opened its doors, almost as soon as visitors begantouring the core exhibition, tour guides were there to express the narrative. Themuseum utilizes public education programs taught by museum educators to informstudents about Jewish heritage and Jewish life before, during, and after theHolocaust. While it is possible to tour the museum as an individual, the majority ofschool groups take organized tours. Encouraging a group experience and openquestioning, the museum’s emphasis on guided tours is part of its core pedagogy,and supports the central message of living Jewish experiences. 129One of these education programs, the Lipper Internship, is designed to traincollege and graduate school students as museum docents. The Lipper programtrains them to educate middle and high school students in their classrooms and atthe museum. These guides speak to students before their visit to the museum in a“pre-visit” lecture at their school, and after their visit in a “post-visit”lecture/discussion at their school. Both apply the “inquiry/discussion technique”utilized during the museum tour that “interjects facts as needed to meet tourobjectives.” 130 The “Lipper Intern” training guide states, “At the Museum you willserve as a mediator and facilitator for dialogue.” 131 The tour guide has the power tocreate an environment that will either alienate or encourage dialogue. As a129 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 23, 2012.130 Denise Lauzier Stone, “A Comparative Study of Two Art Museum Tours and Their Impact on AdultLearning,” Visual Arts Research 23, no. 1 (45) (Spring 1997): 142.Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Meeting Hate with Humanity: Life during the Holocaust,” Tour Outline(Revised Aug. 2011), 1. The three main objectives of the “Meeting Hate with Humanity” tour: 1) Toexplore issues of heritage and cultural identity; 2) To understand WWII and the Holocaust, and its impacton Jewish life; and 3) To investigate ways in which individuals and nations responded, or failed to respond,to the crisis.131 Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Lipper Internship Training: January 3-11, 2012,” in Reading andAssignment Packet (Museum of Jewish Heritage, Spring, 2012), Session 1.53

“mediator and facilitator” at the museum, these interns become de facto “experts” totheir students. This technique may run the risk of perpetuating a hierarchy ofknowledge that disempowers the student. When a museum authority lectures atstudents instead of conversing with them, the students assume a passive role in theeducation process. The museum attempts, through directed and scripted dialogue,to dismantle the hierarchy in order to deepen students’ understanding and heightenintellectual independence. The carefully framed questions presented in the tourscripts represent a key component of the “inquiry/discussion” method.Yet the tour “outline” is a highly scripted affair. The questions are predetermined.At times, the answers are pre-determined. Even the tour length istimed down to the exact minute for each display. With these restrictions, themuseum finds itself inflexible to the academic desires of its student visitors.Instead, the student-guided inquiry tour is used as a mask for an institutionallydesigned investigation.Tour PerformanceThe “Meeting Hate with Humanity” tour is one of eight general tours themuseum offers. 132 It is one of two, however, that offer a pre- and post- visit session132 Museum of Jewish Heritage, “School Tours,” http://www.mjhnyc.org/l_teachers_tours.html, accessedon April 4, 2012. The general school tours available to grades K-12 are as follows: Meeting Hate withHumanity: Life During the Holocaust; Highlights of the Museum Exhibition; My House to Your House:Community Life from Generation to Generation; Love Thy Neighbor: Immigration and the U.S.Experience; Israel and the Diaspora; Building a Bayit: There’s No Place Like Home; Coming of AgeDuring the Holocaust, Coming of Age Now; Our Jewish Heritage.54

to public middle and high schools. Lipper interns strictly conduct the pre- and postvisits,but both Lipper interns and Gallery educators lead museum tours. 133Upon entering the museum, themes of identity and heritage play central rolesin the visitors’ experience. Every artifact on display – when possible – has theoriginal owner’s picture and name linked to it. This reparative act shows theaudience the deep relationships between object, personal identity, and narrative. Italso demonstrations the “living” aspect of the inanimate objects telling the story. 134According to the “Meeting Hate with Humanity: Life during the Holocaust”Tour Outline, the tour guide is instructed to “learn the names of the students […]discuss what names reveal about identity [-] personal and communal identity,” anddiscuss the name of the Museum. 135 This line of inquiry helps facilitate a largerdiscussion about heritage and the importance of Jewish community. After thisinitial introduction, the core lobby directs visitors to two large biblical quotes inHebrew embedded in stone. This lobby, the original lobby of the 1997 museumlayout, is now the location of the first “tour stop.” The quotes with accompanyingEnglish translation, “Remember…never forget” and “There is hope for your future,”introduce universal themes of memory and hope, but in their original Hebrewcontext, they are explicitly Jewish statements in a Jewish tradition. 136 The rest of thefirst floor creates conversation around Jewish religious tradition and how Jews133 The Museum of Jewish Heritage Gallery Educators are volunteers who serve as “tour guides for youth,adult, and family groups.” As stated on the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s current website, the requirementsto be a Gallery Educator are as follows: “Once chosen for the program, candidates attend a 12-week courseof study followed by a 8-week in-gallery practice course. Candidates should have an interest in learninghow to teach using artifacts and be able to be on their feet for two hours while leading visitors through thegalleries.” http://www.mjhnyc.org/a_volunteering.html, accessed on April 24, 2012.134 This decision to have secure provenance on the artifacts also acts as a guard against Holocaust deniers.135 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 2-3.136 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Permanent Exhibit. Museum Exhibit, New York City, NY.55

“retain and celebrate their heritage in various parts of the world.” 137 Tour guidesdiscuss tzedakah [charity and justice] and the synagogue as a community andreligious center. The first floor leaves no doubt that this museum is wholly Jewish.To transition from the first floor “Jewish Life a Century Ago” to the secondfloor “The War Against the Jews,” the tour participants are asked to view the “RatCatcher” illustration. This picture from Germany in 1899 is based on the Pied Piperof Hamelin story. Here, the rats are “portrayed as stereotypical Jews, who representa supposedly negative influence on German life.” 138 The objective at this exhibitcase is to demonstrate that antisemitism did not begin with Hitler and the Nazis, butrather has had a pervasive history. Here and on the second floor, the racism andbigotry depicted are exclusively directed at the Jewish population.The “War Against the Jews” exhibition floor features a board game describinghow antisemitism was “a part of German culture at all levels.” 139 The game’s title,“Jews Out,” further attests to the singular nature of Nazi racism. In discussing thebeginnings of official Nazi discrimination, the museum tour discusses the 1935Nuremberg Laws and German Jewish responses to the situation. At the exhibitioncase featuring Jewish passports and identification cards, the tour guide indicates thered “J” stamped on these documents as well as the insertion of the middle name“Israel” for Jewish men and “Sara” for Jewish women. While the Jewish people wereundoubtedly central targets of the Nazis, the museum censors itself by notdiscussing the early 20 th century eugenics movement and the T-4 and euthanasia137 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 4.138 Ibid., 5.139 Ibid., 6.56

program which targeted the mentally and physically handicapped. 140 Moreover,Nazi policy attacked the homosexual population, political dissidents, Roma and Sinti,Slavs, and Poles. These victims of Nazi policy and brutality are absent from the“Meeting Hate with Humanity” tour script. Interestingly during the planning phasesof the museum, various “Holocaust victims groups” asked that their stories andinput be included in this museum, but the committee declined in favor of a Jewishnarrative that would be able to “universalize” without a universal population. 141The tour script focuses on the Holocaust as experienced by the Jewishvictims, survivors, and resisters. In the exhibits featuring “Kristallnacht,” “ImposingNazi Racial Policy in Poland,” and “Life in the Ghetto,” the emphasis is on theimportance of religious piety, religious community, and spiritual resistance. Thetour script asks the guide to point out the displayed Torah scroll and relate the storyof Seligmann Bamberger. On Kristallnacht, Seligmann went out to “save this Torahfrom his synagogue. He managed to save the Torah. Meanwhile, he also avoidedbeing arrested when angry mobs came to the door of his home. He says that hesaved the Torah, and the Torah saved him.” 142 “Life in the Ghetto” is presented by aRabbi’s spice box. Here, the focus is on how Jews met “hate with humanity.”Cultural and social life is presented as having a deep impact on the Jewishcommunities under Nazi occupation. Forms of spiritual resistance occupy a largepercentage of the tour discussion on the second floor of the core exhibition.140 See Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, and Glass, “Life Unworthy of Life.”141 See Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember.142 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 7.57

A conversation about Jewish children is also included within the largerdiscussion of Jewish reactions to Nazi policy and violence. The tour makes stops at aKindertransport video, a photograph of Lily Glass hiding in a Belgian convent,Yocheved Farber’s toy loom, and Jacques Wisniak’s portrait. 143 The script’sobjective is to “demonstrate the resourcefulness of Jewish families in attempts tosave children” and to “demonstrate the brutality of the Nazi policy towardschildren.” In both of these objectives the child’s agency is missing. In thisunderstanding, to be a child of the Holocaust meant to be at the will of one’s parentsand ultimately one’s perpetrators. This narrative gives the illusion of an intactfamily unit. While deciding the direction of a child, either to a new country, hidingwith neighbors, or remaining in the same place, the family is portrayed as a cohesiveand connected unit.The dialogue regarding “Armed Resistance” centers on youth as well, butilluminates the Vilna Ghetto partisans’ control over their own destiny preciselybecause of the loss of their parents and families. Tour guides are encouraged to ask,“Why do you think young people were often leaders in these movements?” 144 It isimportant to state that at no point does the tour script ask the tour audience toimagine themselves within these stories. While the children within this Holocaustnarrative are roughly within the same age-range of the school children who attendthe museum tours, the script does not want to put its visitors “in someone else’sshoes.” With that being said, research shows that emotionally/reactionary-based143 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Permanent Exhibit.144 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 11.58

questions are answered more frequently than historically-based questions. 145Question like “How do you think each person is feeling?” or “What do you think thismeant to him or her?” received more student participation than questions related tohistorical events and dates. These emotionally charged questions allowed studentswith limited Holocaust knowledge to engage in conversation. Yet, should museuminstructors privilege a sympathetic, aware citizenry devoid of critical historicalknowledge? As the events of the Holocaust fade in time and memory, will this typeof instruction become the future of Holocaust education? If my uninterruptedeighteen years of education have tried to instill in me anything, isn’t it the notionthat rigorous study will lead to an informed action? Will an emotionally-chargedinquiry tour only temporarily influence an audience during their brief introductioninto the Holocaust?The only tour section not to have scripted dialogue is the exhibit on the“Killing Centers.” This section features six photographs representing six killingcenters, a camp uniform, and roughly a thousand Serge Klarsfeld photographs ofFrench Jewish families before the Holocaust. Similar to the “Ejzyzki Shtetlcollection” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, visitors are asked to “explorethe photographs…on your own, silently, and with respect, and focus onremembering the victims.” 146 The entire museum is a memorial, but this silentaspect of the tour allows for a more individualize experience. The audience isallowed to mediate on the images and the narrative they have heard thus far.145 Personal research in various CT, MA, NY, and RI 9 th -12 th grade classrooms using the Museum ofJewish Heritage “Meeting Hate with Humanity” Tour Outline as a 2012 Lipper Intern.146 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 11.59

Across from the Klarsfeld photographs, visitors are shown arguably the most“gruesome” images in the museum. The tour specifically does not mention theseimages. As a “living memorial,” the museum attempts to show the Jewishcommunity as they lived and as they viewed themselves rather than how theperpetrators viewed them. Again, even though it is an unscripted space, visitors areconfronted with a specifically Jewish memory of the concentration camps and killingcenters.As the transition from the second floor into the third floor, the tour scriptreflects on “Liberation.” Specifically, the conversation is about the liberation of theJewish survivors of the European concentration camps and killing centers.American involvement in liberation is only mentioned in passing; the importancelies in the experience of the survivors. 147 Survivor Thea Gottesmann’s “liberationblouse, skirt, [made from Allied fabrics] and bag [made from her prison uniform]”are displayed to show a simultaneous hope for her future and a remembrance of herpast. This literal and symbolic “baggage” represents the trauma many survivorsfaced in the years after the war. For many survivors, liberation remained a lifelongchallenge not a single event brought on by the end of the war. A specific genocidemay be finite, but its trauma is infinite and “ongoing in a lifetime of a people.” 148 It ishistory and contemporary. Emotional scars linger, and the museum and the“Meeting Hate with Humanity” tour do not address this narrative. Rather, the script147 The liberation by Allied and American forces aid the story of survivors and refugees immigrating to theUnited States. Interestingly, American issues of guilt during and after the war are not discussed in the“Meeting Hate with Humanity” tour script. The American experience of the Holocaust is not the missionof the museum, and the tour stays true to it.148 Reeve Robert Brenner, The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors,” (Northvale, New Jersey, andJerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997), 248 – 256.60

would have one believe that all survivors pieced their lives back together in theDisplaced Persons (DP) camps, emigrated to the United States or Israel – the“ancient Jewish homeland” – and then engaged in demanding social justice issues,vowing to “continue helping each other in times of need.” 149 While this story is truefor some, it is a far less joyful and static for others. Survivors’ Holocaust identity caninform their values and morals in positive social ways, but they can also influencemore idiosyncratic and detrimental behaviors due to Holocaust traumas. 150 Internaltimelines of – especially traumatic or fragile – memories do not correspond tomeasurable time, chronological history, or logical reason. Rather they reflectemotional limits, psychological ruptures, and fragmented experiences organizedaround personal salience. One might speculate that the Museum of Jewish Heritagehas yet to discover a way to relate this survivor experience within a traditionalexhibition display that relies heavily on measurable time and chronological history.Life equals change over time, but museums and memorials try to make life morestatic than in reality. They give fixed permanence to memories and personal andcommunal narratives that are ever-changing.Themes of “Activism and Social Justice” permeate the third floor, “JewishRenewal,” exhibition. However, these universal themes are couched in strictlyJewish affairs or Jewish efforts in worldly affairs. Jewish solidarity is presentedthrough a New York poster advocating helping Soviet Jewry in the decades after theHolocaust. Additionally, a board game called “Route to Freedom” looks at the ways149 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 13-14.150 See Hirsch, Afterimage, and Marianne Hirsch, “Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personaland Public Fantasy.” Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Edited by Mieke Bal, JonathanCrewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999): 3-23.61

in which Jews around the world took up the cause of Soviet Jews and organizedpolitically. To discuss how Jews have worked with other groups towards socialjustice issues, the tour script offers the friendship of Martin Luther King, Jr. andRabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Students are asked, “What do you think motivated[Jews to get involved with the Civil Rights movement]?” 151 The script supplies ananswer: the Jewish community “know[s] what can happen when people arepersecuted.” 152 The Holocaust becomes a lesson-generator so-to-speak. Also, itallows the museum to showcase the variety of Jewish involvement in prejudicial,discriminatory, and genocidal events. The museum discusses this involvement asthe reaction to the events of the Holocaust. This problematically situates theHolocaust as a vehicle to portray the Jewish community’s devotion to positive, lifeaffirmingmissions. Now the Holocaust itself has become an artifact for the museumand its mission. Which begs the question: If the Holocaust is merely a vehicle forthis larger goal, how easily can “the Holocaust” be exchanged for another tragedy?Could this museum achieve the mission of creating socially just citizenry without adominant Holocaust narrative? Not to place Holocaust education against “Holocausteducation goals,” but it seems as though the goals are often privileged over thehistory.The final artifact on the third floor is a Holocaust Torah scroll hidden by aPolish farmer. The script’s objective is to “discuss why remembering the Holocaustis important.” 153 While the Torah is seemingly out of place during this social151 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 15.152 Ibid., 15.153 Ibid., 16.62

activism discussion, it serves to re-introduce the presence of Jewish heritage inevery element of Jewish action. While this might be true for the religious Jewishcommunity, this style of narrative omits the involvement of the secular Jewishcommunity. Moreover, it doesn’t allow the inclusion of a Jewish contribution thatdoesn’t contain religious significance or come from a religious source.As students are led out of the museum, they make one final stop at AndyGoldsworthy’s “Garden of Stones.” Eighteen trees grow from eighteen largeboulders in this outdoor memorial space allowing students to “reflect on theirexperience of the core exhibition.” 154 This time allows for the students to interpretthe Garden in any way they so choose, but it is hard to deny that the memorial isladen with a Jewish message. First, the number eighteen has spiritual significance inJudaism: the Hebrew word chai, life, has the numerical value of eighteen. This ideaof life rising from the inconceivable stone reminds an audience of the “re-birth” ofthe Holocaust survivors after liberation. Again, this narrative speaks only of thosesurvivors who understand themselves as the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashof Auschwitz to “Jewish Renewal” in America. It is no coincidence then that theStatue of Liberty and Ellis Island are to be witnessed from the Garden. As a symbolfor new life in America for the approximately 96,000 Jewish immigrants underPresident Harry Truman’s 1945 directive and the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, theStatue of Liberty is not only an important piece of the museum landscape, but it isintegral to the museum narrative. 155 Now, this “re-birth” from the depths of cold,154 Museum of Jewish Heritage, Tour Outline, 16.155 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia: The Aftermath of the Holocaust,http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005129.63

lifeless stone is made possible through America. Just as Israel’s Holocaust museum,Yad Vashem, ends with a panoramic view of Jerusalem’s blossoming countrysideand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum concludes with the WashingtonMonument and American flags on the National Mall, the Museum of Jewish Heritagerationally and emotionally leads to one of the most recognizable symbols of Americain the Statue of Liberty.Final MessageThe Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaustunderstands the importance of presenting Jewish life before, during, and after theHolocaust. Too often in scholarship, the “master narrative” focuses on the Holocaustfrom the rise of German National Socialism to the construction and institution of theFinal Solution. While this difficult history is invaluable to the study of the Holocaust,it problematically turns the victims into dehumanized pieces of the larger Nazihistory. The “Meeting Hate with Humanity: Life during the Holocaust” tour scriptoffers a narrative that describes the Holocaust as not “six million murdered people,”but that it was the murder of “one, plus one, plus one, plus one…” living people. Bystudying the Holocaust, its victims and their lives, the museum highlights theimportance of heritage, history, and identity. As Jewish inmates arrived atAuschwitz, they were tattooed and in that act of desecration, the Nazis eliminatedAccording to Hasia R. Diner in Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age ofMigration (Harvard University Press, 2003), 1, 178, 2.5 million East European Jews immigrated toAmerica in the 19 th and 20 th centuries.64

name and family. 156 The museum’s focus on life beautifully demonstrates that thevictims of the Holocaust had faces, had names, and had families, and all were takenaway be hatred and intolerance.In Theodore Eisenman’s article on Goldsworthy’s artistic addition to themuseum, he explains how the “Garden of Stones” is a living memorial in the truestsense of the word. The trees blossom and retreat with the change of the season, but“ultimately the trees will fuse with the rock, the living cambium beneath the barkwill break, and the trees will die.” 157 These trees are our Holocaust survivors andtheir memories of the Holocaust; they symbolize life and hope, death and pain. Toooften visitors to memorials believe that communal memories are safe, and theydon’t need to keep them because the art piece, or symbol, or museum will do it forthem. These institutions make us believe that memory, narrative, and identity issafe for it is housed in a brick and mortar establishment, a permanent fixture.Young considers the function of these memorials as a tool for active forgetting: “weencourage monuments to do our memory-work for us… For once we assignmonumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of theobligation to remember.” 158 But this museum’s mission charges its audience toactive remembrance: to “never forget” by always remembering. So the trees’ultimate passing is likened to the passing of a torch. It is the asking of someone else156 The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Tattoos and Numbers: The Systemof Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz,” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007056.According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, tattoos were introduced in the autumn of 1941 at only “onelocation, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which consisted of Auschwitz I (main camp),Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monowitz and the subcamps).”157 Theodore Eisenman, “Memory Never Stands Still: Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones is a LivingMemorial to the Holocaust,” Landscape Architecture 94, no. 6 (June 2004): 114.158 James E. Young, “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,” Critical Inquiry18, no. 2 (Winter, 1992): 273.65

to hold on to precious memories. By linking past and present history and memory,the museum explains that “we are all participants in, as well as custodians of, ourhistory.” 159 As the events of the Holocaust fade into the deep timeline of history, themuseum charges visitors with the responsibility to be the voice of impermanence.Students of all ages are “lovingly burdened” with the history of the Holocaust, and asthey grow and graduate their memories and their knowledge become a continuationof the idea of a living memorial.159 Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Keeping History Center,” www.mjhnyc.org/khc/. Accessed on January 5,2012.66

4) Exhibiting the Holocaust, Exhibiting the Self“We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.We are the shoes from grandchildren and grandfathersFrom Prague, Paris, and AmsterdamAnd because we are only made of fabric and leatherAnd not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.”- Moses Schulstein, Yiddish Poet, 1911-1981 160What is a memory once no one else remembers? Arguably, this question isthe reason we collect, maintain, and display material objects. They arerepresentations of our constructed identity. We save things to speak to and speakfor the dead. We save things and instill meaning in them so that they might live onafter us. It is simultaneous memorialization, identity formation, and action. Whenwe exhibit history, we exhibit ourselves. Narratives, memories, and objects are anextension of one’s self: “The body is not large, beautiful, and permanent enough tosatisfy our sense of self. We need [material] to magnify our power, enhance ourbeauty, and extend our memory into the future.” 161 We, as a society, are happierwhen we can situate ourselves in a history. 162 And, therefore turn to a specifichistory or narrative that complements our understanding of ourselves. This160 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Permanent Exhibit. Shown next to a pile of worn shoes fromprisoners of Nazi concentration camps.161 Mihály Csikszentmihályi, “Why We Need Things,” History from Things: Essays on Material Culture,ed. Steven Lubar and David Kingery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993): 28.162 See Mihály Csikszentmihályi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbolsand the Self, Cambridge University Press, 1981, and Robyn Fivush, “Remembering and Reminiscing: HowIndividual Lives are Constructed in Family Narratives,” Memory Studies 1 (2008): 49-58.67

statement speaks to the often questioning of the need for multiple Holocaustmuseums and memorials. It is important to remember that many historiessurround each other, none being the absolute version of history. Having only onemuseum implies a monopoly on the history of an event, a people, and how it shouldbe and will be remembered in the future. One museum will never be able to tell the“whole” story. One museum will never be able to “make everyone happy.” But, onemuseum can tell one interpretation of history. One museum can think globally, butact locally. The localization of Holocaust museums in America has producedimportant narratives of the Holocaust and insight into the politicization of theseinstitutions. The multitude of American Holocaust museums and their tournarratives heightens intellectual independence and deepens understanding of allnarratives.Museums take an active role in determining which traces remain of realmemories and narratives through time. What museums decide to display matters,and what stories they decide to tell matters. It means that a specific narrative hasmade it through the gauntlet, the sifter that assigns a hierarchy of importance tomaterial culture and history. In their handling of history, Holocaust museums andeducational institutions decide what is precious and what should be incorporatedinto a national, Jewish, American identity. Just as Mihály Csikszentmihály believesthe home is a repository for objects that showcase the continuity of the self,museums act similarly in response to historical narratives and corporate or nationalselves. Via forgetting and selectivity, there is a metaphorical fire continuouslyburning in the archives of every museum. As public keepers of history, these68

museums must run into the fire and save what they deem most worth saving. Theyask themselves: “Which traces do we save? Which memories tell the story we wantto tell?” The narrative that is chosen acts as an entry point for understanding valuesand circumstances of the past. The chosen institutional narrative can tell us deeptruths about political, cultural, and social memories and the process of memorycollecting, but do they prevent future atrocities? Is that their intention? And if not,do they then justify atrocity by creating “entertainment” out of it?A level of self-consciousness from the museum will demonstrate awarenessof its own subjectivity and limits. The “central focus” of the museum is no longer theevents of the Holocaust, but rather the mediated Holocaust narrative. Exhibitionstell society much more about institutional identity – local or national culture, ideas,and values – than the history on display. As James Clifford explains, “every versionof an ‘other,’ wherever found, is also the construction of a ‘self,’ and the making ofethnographic texts…has always involved a process of ‘self-fashioning.’” 163The factthat museums “recontextualize and interpret objects is a given, requiring noapologies.” 164 But self-awareness and transparency must be key components in amuseum’s philosophy. It may be argued that the museum has a moral obligation tothe public to explain that their view is a view and not the view. A sort of disclaimer:“The views and opinions expressed in this museum…are exactly that, views andopinions. Come study at this institution, but know who you are studying from.”163 James Clifford and George E. Marcus ed., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography(University of California Press, 2010), 23-24.164 Susan Vogel, “Always True to the Object, in Our Fashion,” Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics andPolitics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 201.69

As we cherish the ability of material objects and narratives to aid in theprocess of community building, we heed the risk of museums as divisive agents ofhierarchy and institutional/political agendas. It is a risk that museums know fulland well, and debate on an on-going basis: to construct a fixed narrative wherehistorical ownership belongs to the institution or to give room for dissention andaudience agency. How can a museum let everyone voice their opinion? Shouldeveryone be allowed to voice their opinion? What is the museum’s responsibility asan authority figure? And, who should decide the answers?Ultimately, with self-consciousness, sensitivity, and serious investment, wemust seek to remember the Holocaust and the vast histories of the Holocaust in alltheir ambiguity, peculiarity, and contradiction; if not for a comprehensive Holocausteducation, then to recognize these narratives’ importance to a sense ofcontemporary post-Holocaust self.____________________The Holocaust was – and is – massive by every measure. It wasgeographically extensive, narratively complex, innovative in terrifying ways, andhad far-reaching socio-political implications. One can study the event, evenexperience the event and come out feeling lost and overwhelmed. MainstreamHolocaust institutions attempt to alleviate some of these feelings of paralysisthrough highly constructed narrative tours of the museum’s principal exhibitions.These narratives become part of the way knowledge of the Holocaust is made70

accessible and intelligible; and the memory of the Holocaust is transmitted to futuregenerations. But the question must always be asked: “Whose memory of theHolocaust?” Remembrance in and of itself is not enough: we must know whose pastand what parts of it we are remembering. These Holocaust museums are not built ina political or geographical vacuum. There is a deep intersection of historicalmemory (documentation) and political identity (presentation) at play. 165 Theseinstitutions are not simply fiction or non-fiction, but an important and complexinteraction of both. It sounds problematic to call a museum fictitious, especially amuseum about the Holocaust, but its fiction lies in the selected documentation andthe chosen portrayal. Linda Hutcheon writes that history and literature are notseparate categories, and all accounts of history are narrations and therefore notobjective or definitive. 166 Fiction, or more comfortably narrative, in Holocaustmuseums directly reflect how a museum wants to present itself to its patrons.Museum narratives, unlike a traditional historical chronicle or other forms ofhistorical representation, do the “imagination” for its students. The museum’sperspective and selectivity is available in three-dimensions. The tour narratives actas an instrument to disseminate this constructed history. It is for this reason,among others, that the Holocaust museums in this study are more comfortablylabeled “narrative museums” instead of history museums. 167 Narrative museums bytheir very definition are self-serving, but fairness and balance “don’t always apply to165 Dubin, Displays of Power, 8.166 See Linda Hutcheon, “Postmodern Provocation: History and ‘Graphic’ Literature,” La Torre: Revista dela Universidad de Puerto Rico 2, no. 4-5 (1997): 306.167 Weinberg, The Holocaust Museum in Washington, 17.71

cultural matters.” 168 These institutions can still be a valuable resource to thestudent of the Holocaust and to society.The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritageare architecturally, geographically, culturally, and politically different. They offerdivergent tour experiences and convey differing narratives. Yet, they serve a fairlysimilar demographic: middle to high school aged students. 169 Each of their narrativepresentations offers something that the other institution cannot. By comparing thesame event through different lenses, we are better equipped to decipher the type ofhistory and the reason for a specific history being offered to its patrons.The Museum of Jewish Heritage exhibition experience is facilitated by ahuman museum guide. The tour contains specific items and the guide explicitlystates that the visitor will be unable to see every exhibit case and every artifact. Inthis way, the experience of the museum’s objects and objectives is controlled. TheU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibition experience is guided by the individualvisitor. With no tour guide, the visitor encounters specific items based on amultitude of factors: 1) The specific visual appeal of an object; 2) The overall visualappeal of a display; 3) Intriguing or forceful audio/video; 4) A personal or academicinterest in specific area; 5) An individual who by nature must see and readeverything the museum offers; and 6) Time available for the visit. 170168 Dubin, Displays of Power, 14, 17. When author Steven C. Dubin interviewed contemporary artist FredWilson, Wilson explained that he created exhibitions that questioned the silent ways that institutionsinfluence what the audience views: “…Museums pride themselves on being objective, and they don’t wantyou to believe that there’s a view that they’re producing.”169 While the age demographic is similar, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum markedly has a morewidespread reach.170 In conjunction with the visual and audial interest factors, there is a voyeuristic element involved in theage-restriction/height-restriction and curiosity on viewing certain materials.72

As an overall performance, the Museum of Jewish Heritage interacts with thevisitor as an “insider” to Holocaust history and Jewish heritage. The narrative looksat the Holocaust and America through Jewish eyes, and it is an exhibition thatfocuses on Jews as the model victim and survivor group. In the presentation ofconcentration camp inmates and victims, the museum provides individual andfamily portraits taken prior to the war to represent the life lost. Additionally, thisapproach shows the victims the way they saw themselves.Conversely, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum relates with the visitor asan “outsider.” The Holocaust is seen through American eyes. The mug-shots andliberation footage present the ways in which “the other” and the Nazis viewed theconcentration camp inmates and victims. In the handling of biblical quotes, themuseum speaks to a Jewish tradition, but speaks to an American-Christian andinternational audience. The text is directed at the non-Jewish visitor who is chargedto be a “witness” for the victims of the Nazis. The Museum of Jewish Heritage speaksto a familiar trope in Jewish tradition: remembering tragedy, but seeing light in thefuture. Both museum narratives are powerful memorials. The Museum of JewishHeritage is more of a memory of the lives Jewish survivors and victims led, whereasthe U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is more of a memory of death and theinhumanity of Nazi actions. Both are invaluable educational tools, and both provideforms of comfort and consolation. A further study would be interested indiscovering if visitors take on the responsibility of commemoration throughactivism as readily via a “Jewish” story at the Museum of Jewish Heritage as theymight through a “universal” story at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.73

A visitor will find much more of a Nazi display as well as depictions of Naziatrocities in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum than at the Museum of JewishHeritage. The event of the Holocaust is so undeniably graphic, the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum contends that, so too must be the presentation. On the otherhand, the Museum of Jewish Heritage attempts to create a Holocaust narrative thatremoves the majority of graphic and explicit Nazi killings. Which invites theimportant question: Is it irresponsible not to include gruesome photographs or Nazicommandants and officials in the history of the Holocaust? Even though it is a partof the story, does it have to be a part of the museum’s story?Regardless of the answers, two additional questions should guide anyconstruction of Holocaust history with the hope of informing a more just andaccepting society: “What is it in human nature and institutions that made theHolocaust possible? And what is it in human nature and institutions that couldmake its recurrence improbable?” 171 These museums struggle to answer thesequestions with varying degrees of success, and further statistical study on thesuccess and failure of lived Holocaust museum education in secondary publiceducation must be conducted in order to state any findings definitively. But, it canbe said that the fears of the devaluation of human life guide Holocaust educationalinstitutions in the 21 st century. 172 Certain histories of the Holocaust use the phrase“never again,” as an anti-genocidal cry and other histories incorporate modern171 Kaplan, Conscience and Memory, xi.172 See Yair Auron, The Pain of Knowledge (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005), Ian Davies,ed., Teaching the Holocaust: Educational Dimensions, Principles and Practice (London: Continuum,2000), Fallace, The Emergence of Holocaust Education in American Schools, Simone Schweber andDebbie Findling, Teaching the Holocaust (Los Angeles, CA: Torah Aura Productions, 2007), SamuelTotten and Stephen Feinberg, eds., Teaching and Studying the Holocaust (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001).74

atrocities into the “Holocaust narrative” to develop stronger ties to activecitizenship, morality, and humanity. Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev explains,“The Holocaust does, in some way, hold our identity together. At the same time, thebuildup of interest in the Holocaust around the world has created a growingawareness of genocide generally, and [Holocaust museums] have an important roleto play in that.” 173 These relationships attempt to construct and reinforce identitywhile teaching coexistence.Today, Holocaust museums “deputize the muses of knowledge to instruct themasses who, in turn, visit them to learn about deeper realities, even as thoserealities are being written and wrought by elites around them.” 174 Museums cannotbe static. They must ebb and flow, and attempt to grow alongside the communitiesthey support. Static or fixed museums can harm the timeline of memory, becausecollective-memory and identity is ever-changing. As public institutions, theseHolocaust museums have a public responsibility. They are the construction zones ofa social conscious. To remain relevant and productive they must teach with theintention of action. Without action, an institution will not remain vital to its society.But “action” is vague and ambiguous. Precisely what action is paramount to apublic-centric institution whose study is particular but whose mission is universal?Dialogue. Discourse. Discussion. Conversation in community is the essentialanti-violence tool available to general citizenry. 175 Museums have the ability toteach visitors to be adept and respectful conversationalists. Our relationship with173 Ethan Bronner, “From Overseas Visitors, a Growing Demand to Study the Holocaust,” New York Times,February 15, 2012, sec. A.174 Luke, Museum Politics, xix.175 Advisory Thesis Meeting, April 2, 2012.75

the Holocaust and the narratives of the Holocaust must be an engagement in criticalreflection. It is the type of reflection that can be classified as meditative and at thesame time communal. It is not enough to introspect, if it does not eventually involvethe community. This is to say, thoughtfulness achieves its pinnacle when incompany. This thoughtfulness can then translate into a commitment to thoughtfuldiscussions, inquisitive mindsets, and respectful behavior. Holocaust museums, andHolocaust education, must teach students “how” to learn about the Holocaust. Thestudy is interdenominational, interdisciplinary, and international. With deeperschool integration, a museum tour narrative will be able to better accommodatetrue student-guided inquiry. A museum is a tool for teachers and students: it aids inshaping an understanding of the Holocaust.In discussing the diversity of possible educational and memorial actions,Kaplan finds it “remarkable how many of those who have addressed the Holocaustwith eloquence have almost simultaneously recommended silence and donepenance for speaking.” 176 To combat this call to silence, Edward Linenthal arguesthat contemporary museums are more like forums than temples. 177 Museums mustpresent safe places that invite public gathering and public conversation. The socialexperience aspect of these spaces transforms them into a marketplace for thesharing of knowledge, personal experience, and ideas. Holocaust museums areinstitutions for historical education, but now more than ever, they must offer a176 Kaplan, Conscience and Memory, ix. Kaplan concludes, “We understand what it is that commandssilence, and the eternal criticism that interrupts us. In a sense, silence here is an effort to allowextinguished voices to be heard. It is the victims’ silence that is a problem, not ours. If we speak, we bringthem back out of chaos; they come back to human identity and bring us back as well, for the humanidentity, though enclosed by silence, is our one inheritance.”177 Edward T. Linenthal, and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for theAmerican Past (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 23.76

sacred space to receive personal Holocaust testimony. The time will soon comewhen every eyewitness to the Nazi crimes against humanity will have passed on.My generation will be the last to say they met a Holocaust survivor. How will wepreserve “original” memory and meaning? How will the objects, photos, and filmstake over after the survivors are gone? What will be the role of the museums andowners of mediated memories? Will the new “owners” of these stories change theirmeaning?In order to participate in the continuation of a living memorial and engage intestimonial transmission, a museum’s purpose and presentation must not allow avisitor to be an inactive spectator. All museums provide a history and some form ofmaterial evidence, but a great museum makes the visitor feel the need to keep theinformation close. The great museum gives context to and forms complexrelationships with the material world and the world of ideas. The great museummakes a visitor feel pressure knowing that the information garnered is importantand life-affirming. If we, as a society, utilize museums in this fashion, dialogue as apedagogical tool will create individual and communal competencies. The utilizationof the object-person relationship should inform and support the more importantperson-person relationship. The lessons that may be gleaned from one of thedarkest periods in humankind are infinite, and in that expanse one can find hopethat the future will be brighter. The Holocaust is a prime example of how dangerousour world can be when we don’t stand up and speak out. If we can and will speak toone another and speak up in the face of human rights violations and violence thenperhaps “never again” will ring true.77

Additionally, communities must be involved in the construction andreconstruction of exhibitions and their narratives. They must hold museums to alevel of cultural empathy in their interpretations of history so that these museums –their collections, exhibits, and narratives – give people self-respect and anunderstanding of others. In short, museums must create relationships. And anyprocess of memorialization that fosters positive relationships (e.g. relationships thatlink history with moral choices) must be understood as a productive endeavor.Using the realm of the Holocaust as a sort of moral litmus test to illuminate humanbehavior – past and present –, museums can contribute to the task of forming amore thoughtful, aware, humane, and just society.78

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